Adelante wrote:
Quote:
General Motors announced Friday it intended to reinstate more than 600 dealerships it had shuttered during its bankruptcy last year.
GM said that after reviewing 1,100 arbitration claims, the automaker had determined it could reopen a substantial number of dealerships, and sent letters of intent to more than 600 of them.
Part of this good news may be due to Toyota's gross negligence. Under its current CEO, Toyota set out to displace General Motors as the world's largest automobile manufacturer. The principles upon which the company had been founded were relaxed if not abandoned; the lessons about quality control that W. Edwards Deming had taught Japanese manufacturers were badly taught to the incoming generation of Toyota executives. What had been a badge of quality has now become a symbol of risk. Families have been killed and people imprisoned for vehicle accidents over which they had no control. GM, along with Ford and whatever Chrysler becomes, may be the beneficiaries -- if they have learned the lesson that quality matters.
Once upon a time, when such a great failure occurred, the person with ultimate responsibility for the failure would commit seppuku. The more recent case of Japan Air Lines flight 123, which had a bulkhead rupture in flight, is illustrative of the same ethos. That airplane crashed into Mount Takamagahara, killing 505 passengers and 15 crew members -- to date, the deadliest airplane accident. The CEO accepted responsibility and resigned with apologies. I suppose that if the CEO is the grandson of the founder of Toyota, no resignation is expected even if the company is severely wounded by the very policies and practices that he set in place. He appears to plan to stay on to reverse what he himself had put in place, even if his resignation would go some distance towards reassuring the public that Toyota is reforming and returning to what it had once been.
[/rant from a Lexus owner (made by Toyota)] Good for GM!