Takata’s Exploding Airbags: Lessons from a Quality Debacle

Abstract

: Purpose: This paper examines the case of a major quality debacle with a view to understanding the true cause or causes that led to it and how such financially devastating failures can be avoided by modern day companies. M ethodology/approach: The researcher first developed two detailed cases using well documented, published materials, then proceeded to execute an analysis and search for causes focusing on one of them. Analysis of the first case, buttressed by information gleaned from the second and other well documented cases provided the basis for reasonably solid understanding of the true cause or causes of major quality failure in modern companies. Findings: The research found that the principal cause of devastating market and financial quality failure in the companies studied was weaknesses inherent in their ethical and moral systems. This was occurred because of failure of top management to design and implementvigorous enforcement mechanisms for ensuring thorough inculcation of ethical and moral principles in quality decision-making. Implementation of quality management systems such as TQM, Six-Sigma and ISO 9000 cannot prevent companies from experiencing these major quality debacles since the key cause of these, effete corporate ethical and moral values, coupled with absence of vigorous enforcement mechanisms, the principal cause of these failures, are poorly addressed by TQM, Six-Sigma and ISO 9000. Only the Baldrige system deals adequately with the need for a robust system of corporate ethical and moral values that deal specifically with the challenge of producing and delivering robust quality. Moreover, only the Baldrige system provides benchmark practices for creating a vigorous enforcement mechanism for ethical behavior in quality management. Implications for management theory and practice: The results obtained show that current deployment of ethical and moral principles as they relate to product and service quality, and the provision of a vigorous enforcement mechanism for inculcating these values and principlesinto the management practices of companiesare very weak.Moreover, these weaknesses expose many companies to spectacular quality failures of the type studied here.It is incumbent on top management to craft and implement a set of corporate ethical and moral principles that apply to quality and an enforcement mechanism to monitor and ensure adherence to these. It is also necessary for TQM, Six-Sigma and ISO 9000 to integrate these principles and enforcement mechanisms into their systems.