business

Takata engineers struggled to maintain air bag quality, documents reveal

8 Comments
By Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein, Ben Klayman and Yoko Kubota

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That's the price they'll have to pay for relying on cheap work overseas.with the fines and recall money, they could've run a Japanese plant for decades...

5 ( +5 / -0 )

Ebisen- if only that was true. Generally the fines issued are a lot less than the savings, and recalls are only done if there are enough civil suits (the real cost - which relies on citizens taking the costly and risky measure of suing).

Overl the goverment regulators fined just provide evidence to back civil suits, which generally end in confidential out of court settlements.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

True, the fines are too low, but the recall costs are staggering. Running a plant, once established, while definitely more expensive in Japan, could in the end prove less costly, if these issues are taken into account. You will NOT find chewing gum in a product made in Japan, especially not in one as sensitive as an airbag...

2 ( +2 / -0 )

recalls are only done if there are enough civil suits

That's certainly not true, the recalls are done by the automotive manufacturers, not the supplier, and the manufacturer has usually safety first in mind. As the part is obviously not made to the given and contacted specification, the supplier will bear the costs...

1 ( +1 / -0 )

ebisenOct. 20, 2014 - 06:25PM JST That's certainly not true, the recalls are done by the automotive manufacturers, not the supplier, and the manufacturer has usually safety first in mind. As the part is obviously not made to the given and contacted specification, the supplier will bear the costs...

You're mistaken. There's a formula that is applied and it is calculated on the expected number of civil suits.

If the number is below the cost of the recall then the manufacturer just issues instructions to all authorised dealers to replace the malfunctioning part when the cars are next in for a service. This lowers the cost as it spreads it across years as people bring their cars in for servicing. The odds are calculated on how many people will have an accident between servicings, the damage for each claim, the percentage of cars not serviced at authorised dealers, etc.

I know this because I have worked with Toyota, Volkswagen, Mercedes Benz and BMW, and all of them use a similar formula.

Recalls are tremendous expensive and damaging to companies' reputations, and are avoided if at all possible.

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

Frungy, don't you teach me about automotive industry, mmkay?!?! ;) Working WITH one of these makers is not equal to working AT one of them for more than a decade. Recalls are not at all avoided, it costs the car maker close nothing in such a case, where the supplier has all the responsibility.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Cheap labor but not good quality.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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