Confessions from quality control part 3 - Dagenham!
Discussion
^ me too, love the way the accent is written!!!
I was once frog marched off some premises I was selling at because i was " telling a pack of lies" about a national company, who were the contractor to the company i was trying to sell to.
All what I said in my sales pitch happened and the vendor called me back in a very apologetic manner.
I was once frog marched off some premises I was selling at because i was " telling a pack of lies" about a national company, who were the contractor to the company i was trying to sell to.
All what I said in my sales pitch happened and the vendor called me back in a very apologetic manner.
Just to add to your delicious Dagenham story. I owned a Garage near Dartford in the late eighties and into the nineties. Our Ford parts supplier, (it was Laidlaw then, but they don't exist now), invited a number of their trade customers on a day out to the Ford plant in Dagenham. We were herded into a huge staff canteen that was both empty and very tatty. We then went on a tour of the engine shop, (which I must assume is still there and still producing engines). We were then shown down the assembly line. At this time they were producing just Fiestas. Sadly though, the production line had stopped for a reason we never found out but hundreds of people were just standing around doing nothing.
Right at the end of this line there was a huge area with about 70 brand new cars seemingly just abandoned. When asked what this area was we were told it's where all the cars with problems went to be sorted out. There were far too many and reflected the "who gives a s*it" attitude of the whole plant.
At the time I was selling nearly new/low mileage Fords - all bought through Ford closed auctions. At every auction was a selection of brand new 10 - 50 mile cars that were labelled as "misbuilds". These cars had bits missing/wrong wheels/sunroof hole not there/wrong interior trim etc., etc. These cars just reflected the whole sad situation at a major car company.
Right at the end of this line there was a huge area with about 70 brand new cars seemingly just abandoned. When asked what this area was we were told it's where all the cars with problems went to be sorted out. There were far too many and reflected the "who gives a s*it" attitude of the whole plant.
At the time I was selling nearly new/low mileage Fords - all bought through Ford closed auctions. At every auction was a selection of brand new 10 - 50 mile cars that were labelled as "misbuilds". These cars had bits missing/wrong wheels/sunroof hole not there/wrong interior trim etc., etc. These cars just reflected the whole sad situation at a major car company.
In the 70's I was a student, I had a summer vacation job at a factory that made various steering and suspension parts for the then-new Ford Escort. The items I was making had a couple of holes drilled, reamed and splined and were then added to a large pile for shipment to Ford. Some testing was done before sending them off since Ford would make checks and occasionally send back consignments that didn't make the grade.
The final part of the sending process was to add a percentage of the ones that Ford had sent back. This percentage would vary according to whether this load was felt to be largely good or not so good. A fine balance was achieved so that the proportion of bad ones was maintained just below the threshold where Ford would get stroppy and send all of them back.
The final part of the sending process was to add a percentage of the ones that Ford had sent back. This percentage would vary according to whether this load was felt to be largely good or not so good. A fine balance was achieved so that the proportion of bad ones was maintained just below the threshold where Ford would get stroppy and send all of them back.
Slightly O/T. I went to Dagenham on a 6th form college economics A level field trip in 1977. At that time it was still producing a lot of cars. I remember watching a bloke whose job appeared to consist of nothing more than squirting oil into each cylinder as the engines came down the line and understood a little of why "a spanner" sometimes went into the works. A more soul destroying place it was hard to imagine. At lunch time we went into a rough pub where there was literally sawdust on the floor. Later in life I became good friends with Alex Park who ran British Leyland at the same time and I learned a bit about what a desperate business it was trying to run a car maker during the industrial strife of the 1970's. Last year I bought Chris Cowin's book British Leyland, Chronicle of a Car Crash 1968-1978 and found it fascinating.
In 2014 I went round the new automated Land Rover plant in Solihull where the aluminum bodied Range Rovers were being produced alongside the Discovery 4. Talk about a contrast. This pristine and efficient modern facility would be unrecognizable to the Dagenham worker of the 1977's.
In 2014 I went round the new automated Land Rover plant in Solihull where the aluminum bodied Range Rovers were being produced alongside the Discovery 4. Talk about a contrast. This pristine and efficient modern facility would be unrecognizable to the Dagenham worker of the 1977's.
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