A scenario this weekend made me envision how quality is or is not apparent maybe on a car assembly line.

I was helping a buddy setup his new office, and we were (or I should say I was) racking the Cisco gear. Wouldn't you know, the 2nd screw I got out of a sealed bag, was not like the others, and began stripping the hole in the rack? Here is a brand spanking new 7' 45U , powder coated rack, drilled into the floor and secured by a ladder rack into the wall--what do we do? I bet if it were Lexus, the entire rack is deinstalled and replaced. Maybe another outfit, the hole is retapped for a larger bolt that doesn't match the others, it works. Or, there's 45U and only 4 items to be racked, choose another position and leave it be. In my example, quality means having a process in place to be sure the bag of bolts provided with the rack are not inferior and are all correct--they were the root cause of the issue.

My hunch is Japanese car makers would attack sources of defects, so this doesn't happen. But if it did, they would still ensure it's done right, at significant cost. This means labor to deinstall the rack, get another, and have it delivered and installed. This is time, money, and resources. There could be others who simply move on...I had purchased Monroe quick struts in the past, where one side had 3 stripped bolts in the strut tower--nice to find when the car is in the air and the original struts are out. Opposite of quality....and why I boycott their products to this day.

Quality, is it job 1?

 

Not really sure what you are trying to say. Toyota still can't make a frame for their Tacomas that does not rust. All makers have issues. Toyota just has better reliability that spills over to a better perceived quality.

 

Although the quality of American-built vehicles is quite a bit better than it was before the 2008-2009 buyouts/reorganizations (partly because UAW members, today, are darn lucky to have a job at all, and they know it), you are still talking about a basic difference in culture between American and Japanese workers. In America, in general, although there are some exceptions, a job is looked at as a necessity....something that one puts up with for X number of hours each day, and then leaves the office or plant, goes home, and forgets about it until the next morning. In Japan, in contrast, work is considered a priviledge, workers in general are far more dedicated to their jobs, management is considered an equal privilege (people aren't given management jobs simply through nepotism or political-preference), and goes out of their way to co-operate with labor and prevent layoffs. Both labor and management groups will often meet after the day's work is done (when workers and managers from many other countries will either be with their families or at the bar drinking) and discuss better ways of getting things done on the assembly lines. That is why, for decades, vehicles from Japan (and, increasingly, from Korea) came from the factories solidly-screwed together, while American-built vehicles were more likely to have defects. However, as I said earlier, in the years since the buyout, the quality of many American-designed and/or American-built products has increased markedly, though we do see thinner sheet metal and some cheaper interior/trim parts on some new vehicles from efforts at weight-reduction and cost-cutting.