Design & Manufacturing Advances

In the 1960s we had Quality Control procedures for all products. This generally required the right tools, training, documentation, inspection and feedback. These usually worked well, but not everywhere. Those companies who overemphasized product component cost reduction ended up reducing quality and reliability and consumers noticed.

The companies who developed the products in the 1930s were riddled with unions and disconnected departments. Design engineers lived in a “stovepipe” and rushed to meet sales and cost reduction goals.  They then tossed the designs over the wall to manufacturing.  Manufacturing had to fight for design changes to make products more manufacturable.

Problems Arose

By the 1970s we had quality problems in automobile manufacturing.  Designs used too many parts, cars rusted, the paint faded, cars were big and they got 10 miles to the gallon. US consumers started to buy smaller foreign imports to get 30 miles to the gallon. Gasoline that had been 19.9 cents a gallon in the 1960s but rose to $1.19 a gallon by 1980.  The price of new cars doubled overnight in 1978. Inflation was over 10% per year.

The Quality Control function in US manufacturing had started with “Zero Defects” in the 1940s, but the US auto industry stuck with “muscle cars” and didn’t improve the quality of their paint or adopt materials that didn’t rust and improvements in gas mileage got them to 20 mpg by the 1980s. Japanese and German auto manufacturers were quick to pick up on the US consumers’ demand for better quality and the US auto companies lost market share.

By the 1980s, we had Quality Circles and ISO 9000, better paint was developed, non-rusting plastics were being tested, cars were designed with fewer parts and design processes were improved. 

Then we used Lean Manufacturing Process Mapping and formed teams to help improve processes. Better tools were employed like coordinate measuring machines to perform automated 3D laser inspection of machined parts.  Robotic welding machines were programmed to ensure good welds and products were improving. 

By the 1990s, we were finally beginning to include design engineering groups to integrate their activities with manufacturing at the beginning of the process.  We improved quality and reliability. We were beginning to design for manufacturing and we were automating to ensure quality.

Then, in the 2001, we started to send manufacturing overseas to reduce production costs by 50%. We had adopted Lean Process Control from design concept to final product production. Off-shoring worked well for some companies, but not for all. There were quality problems. Manufacturing was new to these countries and they had an expensive learning curve.  We had a lot of returns due to the errors they made.  We had to send engineers to these countries to resolve their problems. We had to train their engineers to do sustaining design to deal with component obsolescence. The foreign companies started to cost reduce components and quality suffered. The products we were having built overseas became the low end of global products available.  Our low cost consumer electronics had become low quality junk.  

The Japanese introduced the Prius in 2000 and finished a redesign in 2005. The Prius got 60 mpg. German companies continued to stress quality and other European companies did the same.

US Consultants J. Edwards Deming and Tony Athos warned not to take the joy out of work and stressed respect for the individual – the primary requirement for managers that peaked in the 1980s, but declined. 

Lean Management processes are in place in US manufacturing. We still have a workforce trained in these methods.  We can bring manufacturing back to the US and we should do that to help our economy. But we don’t have much time.  Those of us who were the managers and engineers who established Lean Management are retiring. We will return to the workforce to manage the reentry of manufacturing to the US.

Trump can bring manufacturing back to the US by lowering our 35% corporate tax to 15%, eliminating job-killing unnecessary regulations, reducing immigration back to pre-1989 levels and establishing tariffs on imports.  

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader