Confessions from quality control - The Frontera factory
Discussion
My Dad had a new BMW 540 stolen off a petrol station forecourt in around 1993 or 1994 from somewhere in Dagenham - he had always been fairly lax and from what i'm told just left the keys in the ignition whilst he paid. Anyway, we never got the car back and Dad replaced it with a 2.3TD red Frontera (J637 XPU). It took me and my sisters everywhere for years, and actually never let him down, despite it being absolute crap and possibly the slowest vehicle on the road. It eventually met it's demise only a few years ago and Dad shockingly replaced it with another under powered utterly terrible 4x4; the Chevrolet Captiva.
I remember the Frontera always had bits of paper stuffed in gaps between the plastic to stop the damn thing rattling. Honestly, i've no idea how he put up with it for so long, one can only guess old age!
I remember the Frontera always had bits of paper stuffed in gaps between the plastic to stop the damn thing rattling. Honestly, i've no idea how he put up with it for so long, one can only guess old age!
I was involved as an IT consultant and had the pleasure of visiting the Rover 75 factory. We were looking at the system that controlled the production line and noticed a few interesting features.
1. No antivirus software was installed. Not an issue if it was not networked but it was and on the main company network from what I could gather.
2. There was no resilience. If the computer failed there was no hot or cold standby system to replace it.
3. It ran on Windows NT4 which whilst not a bad OS wasn't as stable as a Unix system and could easily have been clustered to provide resilience.
When asked if they wanted to cluster it the reply was it would cost too much money. When asked how much it cost to shut down the line the reply was £1m per hour (which even if it was a 10x exaggeration was still a lot more than clustering it in some way!).
I wasn't at all surprised Rover went bust...
1. No antivirus software was installed. Not an issue if it was not networked but it was and on the main company network from what I could gather.
2. There was no resilience. If the computer failed there was no hot or cold standby system to replace it.
3. It ran on Windows NT4 which whilst not a bad OS wasn't as stable as a Unix system and could easily have been clustered to provide resilience.
When asked if they wanted to cluster it the reply was it would cost too much money. When asked how much it cost to shut down the line the reply was £1m per hour (which even if it was a 10x exaggeration was still a lot more than clustering it in some way!).
I wasn't at all surprised Rover went bust...
Many years ago my dad bought a new Norton 650 Atlas that kept seizing it's push rods. He eventualy took it back to the factory where they discovered the oil feed lines were full of solder from where the banjo fittings had been braized on.
He described the factory as ancient and decrepit, even by the standards of the 1960's!
He described the factory as ancient and decrepit, even by the standards of the 1960's!
Willy Nilly said:
Have you or anyone else done any worked at the Japanese plants in the UK? it would be interesting to hear how they work
Quite a bit different to the story in the OP I expect, 5S and kanbans up the ying yang, kaizens on the regular to implement process improvements. The McLaren P1 production line is like the ultimate 5S line, which is easier when you don't have to make many cars I suppose.
More please!!The Crack Fox said:
Slumped in the drivers seat, boots on the dashboard, smoking a fragile looking roll-up and simultaneously eating a limp sandwich, sat Dave. “Fag break” he said, dropping crumbs and ash everywhere. “Come back later”.
I never did.
I used to work for a large US owned and managed OEM supplier. Quality first we were always told and anything less than 100% was reworked or scrapped. After 10 years the Yanks sold up and a British conglomerate came in and cut staff, costs, QC and finally moved production to Eastern Europe. First the quality went and then the jobs. Dave's attitude may have been rubbish but the sI never did.
te probably started much higher and travelled downhill.
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