Grrrrr, Another Little Quality Problem
To those of you who regularly read my weekly blog, I apologize for not posting one last week. My family and I took a micro-vacation. Everything went well, with one exception. My car developed a front-headlight problem.
I’ll tell you why that ticked me off so much. We own three cars: two Toyotas and an American auto. We bought each one of them brand new in 2001 and 2002. Here’s my quiz question to you: One of those cars has a mechanical problem every six to eight weeks. Guess which one it is.
The problems are never enormous breakdowns. They’re the small, niggling ones, but nevertheless significant and irritating. Like a driver’s seatbelt that is stuck, a right-direction blinker that’s on the fritz, or a passenger airbag that (according to the ever-friendly dashboard computer) needs to be checked. And let’s not forget the inevitable once-every-four month recall notice for some arcane something-or-other in the underbelly.
The people at the dealership are very nice, but just working the logistics to get the vehicle to them and then pick it up is a royal pain in the neck. My wife keeps telling me to dump my car and replace it with a Toyota. Maybe she’s right. Over the past decade we’ve owned a string of Toyotas and two American cars. Never a problem with the former, constant little ones with the latter.
I’m fed up, not only because of the hassles, but because I’m a rooter for Detroit to get its act together. Yes, I know that Ford and GM are saddled with enormous legacy costs that put them at a severe financial disadvantage when compared to Japanese vehicles. But none of that matters if they can’t make cars that work.
I’ll tell you why this discussion is so important. In every business nowadays, zero defects is simply the price of admission. Customers assume that the products they buy will run right until they’re finally ready to be discarded or replaced. Period. End of story.
But there’s more. Zero defects only allows the vendor to play in the game. To survive. But not to thrive. The bar has been raised. Competitive advantage in the car industry is about zero defects for starters—and also about design, fits, finishes, new technologies (like hybrid), customization, after-sale service, and such.
But forget the design and service and all. How can Detroit hope to compete (other than constantly lowering prices and thus killing any hope for sustainable margins and profitable growth) if I, a customer, can’t even count on the car to run error-free for more than six weeks at a time? If you’ve got an answer to that question, please let me know. Maybe I’ll figure it out as I dutifully head to the dealership tomorrow.
I’ll tell you why that ticked me off so much. We own three cars: two Toyotas and an American auto. We bought each one of them brand new in 2001 and 2002. Here’s my quiz question to you: One of those cars has a mechanical problem every six to eight weeks. Guess which one it is.
The problems are never enormous breakdowns. They’re the small, niggling ones, but nevertheless significant and irritating. Like a driver’s seatbelt that is stuck, a right-direction blinker that’s on the fritz, or a passenger airbag that (according to the ever-friendly dashboard computer) needs to be checked. And let’s not forget the inevitable once-every-four month recall notice for some arcane something-or-other in the underbelly.
The people at the dealership are very nice, but just working the logistics to get the vehicle to them and then pick it up is a royal pain in the neck. My wife keeps telling me to dump my car and replace it with a Toyota. Maybe she’s right. Over the past decade we’ve owned a string of Toyotas and two American cars. Never a problem with the former, constant little ones with the latter.
I’m fed up, not only because of the hassles, but because I’m a rooter for Detroit to get its act together. Yes, I know that Ford and GM are saddled with enormous legacy costs that put them at a severe financial disadvantage when compared to Japanese vehicles. But none of that matters if they can’t make cars that work.
I’ll tell you why this discussion is so important. In every business nowadays, zero defects is simply the price of admission. Customers assume that the products they buy will run right until they’re finally ready to be discarded or replaced. Period. End of story.
But there’s more. Zero defects only allows the vendor to play in the game. To survive. But not to thrive. The bar has been raised. Competitive advantage in the car industry is about zero defects for starters—and also about design, fits, finishes, new technologies (like hybrid), customization, after-sale service, and such.
But forget the design and service and all. How can Detroit hope to compete (other than constantly lowering prices and thus killing any hope for sustainable margins and profitable growth) if I, a customer, can’t even count on the car to run error-free for more than six weeks at a time? If you’ve got an answer to that question, please let me know. Maybe I’ll figure it out as I dutifully head to the dealership tomorrow.
posted by Oren Harari at 11:08 AM
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