bones
Wow ! Unfortunately shoddy assembly sometimes happens regardless of country of manufacture. Lousy after sales service is another matter. That's never excusable
Originally Posted by
sharpshooter90
That almost sounds like the result of having a bunch of PhD's running the show. These guys have a tendency to live in an insulated world of their own. I read some resume's on the Smithy site, and it appears that they all shuffled from one car company to another- the state of our automotive industry says a lot about that, and it looks like Smithy ended up with some of the driftwood. I have some experience with top-heavy organizations from my military experience. I must grudgingly give credit to the Japs for the way they run things. They have a culture which respects the line workers as much as the executives, and as a result, design innovations and improvements usually come from the bottom up, with the PhD types doing the details of the implementation.
Take that list of employees with a grain of salt. I recognize one of those names and strongly suspect he has little to do with day-to-day operations. On the payroll as an advisor and occasional visitor more likely.
BUT... I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment. The 'masters and peons' attitude has gone a long way to put North American manufacturing in the mess it's in. It might have worked for a hands-on guy like Henry Ford but the world has moved on. The 'we' attitude is strong in Japanese corporate culture.
Anyone who says "It only goes together one way" has no imagination.