Nissan submitted its report on its internal findings to the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Tourism and found that a deep-seated culture of complacency caused this latest inspection scandal.
Nissan of Japan rocked its home country this July when they were caught falsifying inspection stamps to ship out cars as soon as possible without regard to quality of the final inspection. As per Nissan in a press release they put out earlier last week (Sept. 26,2018) it looks like the problem was much more nuanced and a lot more involved than just inspection stamps, in fact, it was a culture of complacency towards final inspections that should’ve been nipped at the bud long before it got out of hand. In their litany of causes was the need to meet production goals and targets, a very Japanese excuse but an excuse that shouldn’t have been taken to the extreme, nonetheless. There were other excuses compounded on top of that.
First that sticks out in the report was a lack of respect for final inspections culture. It was noteworthy for Nissan that they put it as number one in their list of causes.
“When inspectors rewrote test result data and conducted tests in an improper manner, they were generally aware of the fact that their actions were in violation of the company’s operational manuals and the requirements of the sample testing procedures.”
At a foundational level, this lack of respect, in my opinion, was at the heart of Nissan’s final inspection problem. It takes just one or a couple of brave individuals to recognize their faults in the inspection line to bring this to light.
But, this brings me to the next most important cause for these misconstrued inspection results and probes an even deeper problem for Japanese companies in general, the need to produce results and meet goals above all else.
“Focus on improving productivity and meeting targets resulted in the neglect of key factors required for robust maintenance and development of vehicle production plants.”
How ironic that in order to improve productivity, final inspection results had to be falsified and standards shifted in order to meet those goals. Again, this mostly stems from item number one, a lack of respect for the process.
On top of that, there was a lack of training, not enough supervisors on the final inspection line, and the test equipment wasn’t up to snuff, and in some cases, didn’t work.
To counteract these excuses, Nissan listed 53 line items that should overhaul their final inspection process.
Jalopnik reports that none of these shoddily inspected cars made it to our shores, so we’re OK. But for Japan and that “made in Japan” reputation, this is a big deal.
You’d better believe Nissan Japan will be producing some of the best quality cars that you’ve ever seen, at least for the home market.
