Steel issues ?

Supply Chain folks in Michigan getting a wake up call ?

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/...101632833.html

Wow,what is worse is the aircraft parts,they have a tendency to fail when you are 15,000 ft up in the air.

The end users are not spot checking quality control any more?

^^^ The film noir All My Sons with the great Edward G. Robinson comes to mind. Greed and profit rule out - knowingly using defective airplane parts!

Had a couple of co-workers that used to work at McLouth Steel back in the day. They used to tell stories of the Nepotism in the main office as relatives of the execs used to get high salary jobs all the while production quality was dropping along with output. In the end, while trying to compete with the glut of Japanese steel, their product was hitting higher and higher rejection rates by purchasers due to its quality. A shadow company formed by execs would then buy the rejected steel at pennies on the dollar and then resell it back to the original purchaser, mostly GM. [[What effect did that have on GM's quality perception.) Talk about milking a product for maximum profit while driving the company over a cliff. Where's the social and national pride or conscience in that? Bankrupt a company while giving relatives jobs they don't deserve. Cheapen the product, then buy it for pennies on the dollar and resell it for a profit while the company is filing for bankruptcy protection from foreign competition. Oh yeah, they also sold the company to the employees as a final insult.

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Originally Posted by GMan

Had a couple of co-workers that used to work at McLouth Steel back in the day. They used to tell stories of the Nepotism in the main office as relatives of the execs used to get high salary jobs all the while production quality was dropping along with output. In the end, while trying to compete with the glut of Japanese steel, their product was hitting higher and higher rejection rates by purchasers due to its quality. A shadow company formed by execs would then buy the rejected steel at pennies on the dollar and then resell it back to the original purchaser, mostly GM. Talk about milking a product for maximum profit while driving the company over a cliff. Where's the social and national pride or conscience in that? Bankrupt a company while giving relatives jobs they don't deserve. Cheapen the product, then buy it for pennies on the dollar and resell it for a profit while the company is filing for bankruptcy protection from foreign competition. Oh yeah, they also sold the company to the employees as a final insult.

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THAT story, and all the countless production line horror stories @ American automotive companies, is exactly why America lost it's foothold as a global manufacturing power.

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Originally Posted by Richard

The end users are not spot checking quality control any more?

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I'm sure large companies have the resources to double check. GM and Whirlpool are definitely doing spot checks. The smaller companies, probably not so much. The problem is the equipment used to check the quality of steel, X-Ray crystallography machines, are expensive and complicated to run and maintain. So you outsource, but now you're trusting another company to be on the up and up.

Anyways, forging material quality certifications is flat-out fraud. Kobe steel is either going away, or is going to be owned by whomever files the enormous lawsuits that will inevitably follow.

Department of justice is now investigating.
https://jalopnik.com/the-u-s-governm...-po-1819618660