80s Recollection

As the Japanese auto makers grew within Europe and North America, this ignited major changes on how the automotive business was conducted.  I personally believe these changes were much needed in order to improve product quality and customer satisfaction. 

Auto makers were just coming out of the era when owning a car gave you freedom.  I believe auto makers were more concerned about meeting market demand and mass producing versa customer satisfaction.  There wasn’t a lot of competition back then, so I’d imagine it was all about the look of a big car that would allow room for a large family of 3 or more children.

In 1980, Ford, GM and Chrysler had more than 73% of the North American market share.  (Source: Wall Street Journal, based on findings from Warts Auto).  General Motors alone had close to 50% of the global market.

For those that are not familiar with the automotive industry, I remember General Motors already having assembly plants in Europe, South America, Australia and Africa. 

Source:  Automotive Data Center and R. L. Polk and Co.

For a clearer view of the above chart, click here.

As competition was growing, the automotive manufacturers started to embark on improving customer satisfaction by providing products with better quality, reliability and price.  I remember being introduced to a few quality assurance systems that were named as follows:

·      General Motors:  Golden Metal Achievement Award

·      Ford:  Q1

·      Chrysler:  Pentastar

The buzz word in those days was SPC (Statistical Process Control).

The European OEM’s were following the ISO quality system and the Japanese came up with their own system based on a combination of ISO and Ford, GM and Chrysler’s quality systems.  (They took the best ideas from all). 

The Japanese were clever, realizing in the early days that they’re product had quality issues, they hired W Edwards Deming to teach them how to use existing techniques that would improve their quality and reliability.