posted 23 August 2000 03:58 AM               

Do you or does anybody have any information about the Firstone problem. I can see the message at the top of one of your pages, but unless i am doing something wrong it doesnt lead to any other info.

Actually, thinking about it, does anybody have ANY examples like this which could support or help to justify the implementation of procedures in a company. I would tend to circulate them inside sceptical organisations if i feel i need additional support

Regards

posted 23 August 2000 03:06 PM               

There were some procedures in place (found to be inadequate and ignored) and a failure occurred. This may be similar to the tire issue.

posted 24 August 2000 03:16 AM               

But do you know where it is possible to get hold of the facts/reports/articles for either situation.

Regards

posted 30 August 2000 03:33 PM               

Would anyone want to bet that there are at least one or two QA guys sitting around explaining why/how/when they should have addressed the problem to a bunch of production supervisors & other management types that could have been turning a blind eye to information supplied to them?

- Last RUMOR I heard was that the cost will be over 3.5 billion before this is over - would have supported a raft of quality programs and saved a raft of lives. Now- there are Rumors that they have known - or should have know for quite awhile - similar "problems" were related to them from oversea's long before it turned up here in the states.

posted 01 September 2000 10:55 AM               

Ford President on CNN news last night 8/31/00 - explaining they were inquiring with Goodyear & Michilen for possible help in supplying replacments?..

Stating "they were monitoring" the Firestone situation on a day by day basis..

according to "The Media"

posted 12 September 2000 11:37 PM               

Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 09:59:50 -0500
From: Jay Warner
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: Greg Gogates [email protected]
Subject: Re: External documents - tires, pressures & calibration

Dear ISO17025 people,

This posting below was made in early July, before the Firestone/ Bridgestone tire issues hit the public & congressional fan. In some ways, I feel the comments about tire pressure were prescient.

Bridgestone contends that low tire pressure and excessive speed are major contributing causes of tread separation.

Whether or not you (or the data) agree, maybe an occasional check of tire pressure combined with an occasional check of the speedometer would be a good thing for "a useable mode of transport for the purpose intended."

And calibration of the pressure gauge should be included in the debate, as well. Just what is the uncertainty of that air pressure gauge at the gas station, anyway? Not to mention the uncertainty of the air pressure "when the tire is cold" vs. when it is checked. Bridgestone and Ford are debating a difference in pressure of 4 psi, as if the precision of the measurement was smaller than 1 psi.

Jay

Greg Gogates wrote:

> Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2000 16:20:32 -0500
> From: TSmith
> To: Greg Gogates
> Subject: Re: External documents re2
>
> Greetings Phil,
>
> I like this thread. It brings tears to many peoples eyes. One must assume
> when we impose this Doc Control Issue that the client has a need to maintain
> the most current revision Test equipment with the most current mods that
> warrant the most current printed and published manuals for the instrument.
> In the same light, when was the last time you called the automotive
> manufacturer of the car you drive to obtain the most current ownners manual
> revision for your model car or truck. I hope that if you are still driving
> with out the most current owners manual, that its still a useable mode of
> transport for the purpose intended. ? Humm. But never fear. When the day
> comes that you get stopped for a traffic ticket. (equal to observing a test
> that you didnt do so well on), the officer wont ask for your most current
> copy of your owners manual to justify the stated tire pressure in the manual
> is 38 lbs. and your spare tire was 37lbs.) It didnt make you go faster did
> it. Anyways just laugh this one off and lets focus on making good
> measurements.
>
> The Duke

--
Jay Warner
Principal Scientist
Warner Consulting, Inc.
4444 North Green Bay Road
Racine, WI 53404-1216
USA

Ph: (262) 634-9100
FAX: (262) 681-1133
email: [email protected]
web: http://www.a2q.com

posted 14 September 2000 09:35 AM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by Steven Truchon:

Did anyone else catch this one?

---

posted 14 September 2000 10:13 AM               

I, too remember the days of MIL-Q-9858 (which is really where ISO9000 came from). DCAS would NEVER "approve" a company to the specification, but would perform audits and find the systems to be either "acceptable" or "unacceptable". This absolved them of any liability.

I always embraced the idea of ISO9000 as a standard for a good quality program. I just could never accept the "approval" process.

posted 18 September 2000 03:22 PM               

Abstract:
Lloyd's Register, a 240-year-old company with headquarters in the United Kingdom and 200 offices worldwide, inspected Firestone's Decatur, Ill., plant in 1997 and awarded it the quality seal of approval known as QS-9000.

Bruce Kaster, a lawyer who sues tire companies, says he doubts if Lloyd's will be sued, because companies can hide the truth from auditors. But James Kolka, a lawyer who has written a book about the legal liability of such quality certifications, says there is no reason plaintiffs won't name Lloyd's along with Bridgestone and Ford.

QS-9000 is the automotive subset of ISO-9000, a rigid quality standard well known to manufacturers worldwide. In this case, it saved the trouble and expense of each automaker inspecting Firestone's Decatur plant. Instead, Firestone hired Lloyd's to inspect the plant and verify its process quality for all.
-----------------------------

Look in the USA Today archive section and use qs-9000 as the search within the last 30 days.

posted 22 November 2000 05:21 PM               

From: "Daniels, Beverly"

Without answering the "should the registrar have detected the problem and rescinded Firestone's QS registration" argument, I do want to address Doug Pfrang's comments about the "low" defect level and the "customer abuse".

Doug wrote:
> Finally, keep in mind that the number of customer complaints
> that triggered Firestone's recall is less than 0.01% of the
> 6.5 million tires that Firestone has agreed to replace, and
> the latter is only a small fraction of the total number of
> tires that Firestone currently has on the road.

Yes this seems like a small number (it's ~ 100 ppm). However, I'd like to calibrate us all on what constitutes a small number in the auto industry (and many other industries) and how these numbers are really larger than we might think.

First: 100 ppm is too large per QS9000 requirements for critical characteristics. They are very tight about this in their specification of Cpk/Ppk requirements.

But more to the point a .01% failure rate in a product grouping (and this is how it's looked at not by looking at the failure rate for the entire product line...) is considered very large in automotive, particularly for the kind of failures (catastrophic product failure and death). Look at eh FMEA forms: they REQUIRE preventive action for any "10" in severity of effect, which means that the failure will be unannounced, the effect unavoidable and a serious safety "occurrence" inevitable should the failure occur. And this requirement for action on a 10 is regardless of probably occurrence level! so the generally accepted practice in the automotive industry is that this .01% is too large. Now, reasonable people know that it's really possible that this failure mode "may" have been "unknown" in any FMEA, but good quality, business or ethical understandings should have led Firestone to taking immediate corrective action to PREVENT the reoccurrence of the failure in future product once the field failure rate was known. And, yes in my time in the automotive industry (and others) I worked on many such low defect / rate high severity issues to correct them. It was an imperative to save lives and save the company from the inevitable litigation and legislative actions if we didn't correct the issues.

Also, having studied automotive/consumer warranty for a long time, the actual number of failures is always under-reported by the user and under accepted by the manufacturer...the actual numbers of failures is in all likelihood far higher than .01% - or whatever number is being bandied around today. Especially with tires which have very daunting rules about warranty. They are set up to under report.

Another point inside this one: Mr. Pfrang states that there is only one vehicle that is overwhelmingly involved and this is not completely true (as far as I can tell from all of the public reports). First off it appears that the Explorer is the largest (by far) user of these tires so they would have the largest amount of failures. Secondly it does sound as if there is an interaction between the tires and something with the Explorer that could be making the occurrence rate with the Explorer higher than with other vehicles...certainly the Explorers high center of gravity would make the vehicle more likely to roll when the tire blows (it' a very violent event) So that the Explorer would experience more deaths per tire failure than other vehicles that have a lower tendency to roll. This phenomenon would also lead to a relative under reporting of the tire failure for those vehicles that did not roll and hence did not experience any human damage. (The Ford truck sites, by the way are full of stories of Ford TRUCKS experiencing the tire blowout but not the rolling/death consequence...) Now, of course my "reporting" here is based on publicly available data - if one knows where to look - and that is not the whole truth, nor even the truth in many cases. The point to learn here is that until the lawsuits are settled the true "reported to the entities involved" numbers will be a large matter of speculation. And the true number of incidents will never be known. But .01% is very large for this type of event.

Mr. Pfrang also states:
> Frankly, given the way many drivers abuse their tires --
> chronic underinflation, overloading, squealing tires away
> from stoplights and around corners, slamming on brakes,
> driving off-road, driving on pavement that can range from
> 35 degrees below zero to 160 degrees above, driving 80 mph
> and above (and slamming into potholes and road debris at
> those speeds), hitting curbs, hitting glass, etc. -- I'm
> amazed we don't see far more "premature" tire failures.

Well, this may be true. I hate those dang Customers. They never do what we tell them to do with our product, do they? The world would be a better place without them! They are the root of all evil and should be shot on sight!!

All sarcasm aside: that's the market boys! and the automotive industry knows it. And MOST products prepare for it. The smart ones do it consistently. The dumb ones lose market share and go out of business. The Customer today expects more and more. They want the product to withstand what they "reasonably" will do with it...and the conditions that are listed above are reasonable. Maybe on the harsh end of reasonable...but still reasonable. And quite a few of the examples are unavoidable conditions of the driving environment in the US and the world...AND my SUV better be able to drive off road - that's what I bought it to do and that's what it's advertised to do and by golly it better do it for the money I paid for it!

Sorry Doug, the above is not abuse. Only those who want to tell the customer the exact conditions of use of their product think that. And they are in severe denial. The vast majority of the auto industry knows it's a fact of life. They may not like it, they may complain about it, but they DO design and manufacture their product to perform in that kind of environment. Cause if they don't - someone else will.

And more to the point: From what has been reported: NONE of the stated conditions above would lead to the type of failure the Firestone are experiencing. (Driving long distances at highway speeds - not an unreasonable expectation - may make the failure occur earlier, but it would still occur). It is an internal manufacturing defect that takes time (actually use) to finally fail. But it's not the use that causes the failure; that's normal and expected environmental stress. It's the manufacturing defect that causes the failure.

posted 22 November 2000 05:24 PM               

From: "Pfrang, Doug"

This Firestone matter has raised questions in my mind regarding the extent to which a product failure can or should influence future ISO surveillance audits.

Let's say an ISO-registered company has a well-publicized product failure -- one that gets lots of media coverage. I'm using Firestone as an example, but it need not be a situation where fatalities and a recall are involved. What matters is that the registrar knows about the product failure, and it's a relatively major failure.

Given that ISO registrars perform surveillance audits according to a pre-established schedule, what impact, if any, can or should the product failure have on future surveillance audit? Of course, the registrar will probably want to check the company's CAPA concerning the product failure, but can or should the registrar be allowed to go on a fishing expedition trying to find nonconformities related to that specific product?

Of course, this is precisely what a regulatory body, like FDA, would do (and should do), but is this sort of thing proper for an ISO registrar, and, if so, what is the justification? Keep in mind that the company already knows about the problem, and that the surveillance audit provides virtually no "value added" if it merely identifies quality problems which the company has already uncovered.

Just looking for your opinions.

Thanks,