Quality Management System Failure of all time: Ford Pinto Prepared By: Reflection

Md.Mostakim Sobhan Raihan Id no.091406

Company History of Ford Pinto

In the 1970s, the Ford Pinto is most well-known and the worst disaster

Ford Motor Company is an American

automaker and the world’s 5th largest

automaker

Henry Ford started the Ford Motor

Company,

Continued....

• Ford launched PINTO in 1971 to compete with German and Japanese compact cars

• PINTO was introduced

by President Lee Iacocca succeeding an internal struggle

Safety doesn’t sell?

There was a corporate belief, attributed to Lee

Iacocca himself, which stated "safety doesn't sell.”

“This became a corporate belief what we can see where it led the

Ford motor company, i.e. towards a hasty design of Ford Pinto

which eventually came out as being hugely defected”.

5

Counterparts

Volkswagen Beetle

Ford Pinto

6

Chevrolet Vega

AMC Gremlin

Continued..

Masfi Rahman Id no.104880

• We Go Further at Ford to meet the needs of our customers, the challenges of our industry and the issues confronting our world.

Vision

• Go Further Mission

Vision and Mission

Quality Failure

Quality is ensured by Quality Management System.

Customers might be upset

Management and employees both might be unhappy

Sustaining Quality: Underlying Causes for Failure

Lack of leadership for quality

Lack of planning for quality

Inadequate resources for quality

Inadequate human resources development and management

Lack of customer focus

Faujia Mollick Id no.10488

Quality Failure of Ford Pinto

Causes of Ford Pinto top list of Quality failure :

•Design flaws

•Questionable ethics decisions by top management

resulting in dangerous vehicle

•Many were considered ugly

•40-50,000 miles was not unusual for major breakdowns

The Pinto Fire Controversy As early as 1972, there reports of explosions in low-speed collisions involving Pintos.

Accident investigations revealed reports of trauma injuries and deaths.

Results were; 11 crashes, 8 gas tanks ruptured, burst into flames.

Ford had first conducted rear-end collision tests on the Pinto in December 1970, months after it was already in production.

Nasrin Nahar Id no 104996

Causes of the explosions

Filler neck breaking off and allowing fuel to pour out

Tank being penetrated by contact with differential mounting bolts and right shock absorber.

Continued…..

Engineers found that the majority of the ruptures were caused

by two factors:

Gas Tank Configurations

• Behind Rear-Axle

• Over-the-Axle Tank

Behind Rear-Axle Tank

Pros:

More Luggage space

Industry standard – felt it was safer

Cons:

Not as safe in rear-end collisions

Continued….

Continued….

Over-the-axle-tank

Pro: Performed well in rear-end collisions

Cons:

Long “round-about” filler pipe

Closer to passengers in back seat

Higher center of gravity

Reduced trunk space

Khan Rashel Rahman Id. No 105034

The design of Pinto was questionable. The design problems first came into public attention in August,1977 in an article of “Mother Jones Magazine”. This article condemned the Ford Motor Company and the author was later given a “Pulitzer Prize”

Questionable design

Toufiqul Islam Id no.104856

Other Causes of Quality Failure

Fighting strong competition from Volkswagen

Assembly-line machinery was already tooled.

Ford successfully lobbied, with extraordinary vigor and some blatant lies, against a key government safety standard.

Fixing the explosion problem

Use of a rubber bladder/liner

• Most effective • Exterior of the

tank was ruptured

• Unit cost of bladders would have amounted to $5.08 per car.

Attaching extra steel plate

• An extra steel plate attached to the rear of the car just behind the bumper.

• Successfully warded off a blow at 30 mph.

• Could have cost up to $11 per car to install.

Simple Plastic Insulator

• Simple plastic insulator kept the bolts from ever making contact with the fuel tank.

• Cost of this item was less than $1.

Compensation

A serious burn injury was worth about $67,000.

Experts calculated the value of a human life at around $200,000

In 1978, three girls died in a Pinto collision fire.

It was a real wake-up call for Ford

The driver of the car had died from her injuries a few days after the accident.

California jury awarded a boy who had been severely burned and disfigured a total of $126 million.

Nabiha Binte Manjur id no104904

Why Ford did it

Continued…..

Knew Pinto was a firetrap, yet paid out millions to settle damage suits.

Ford has crash-tested Pinto more than 40 times at over 25 mph and all of them resulted in ruptured tank.

Waited eight years because cost benefit analysis showed changes were not profitable.

Ford marketing team dropped the line “Pinto leaves you with that warm feeling “.

Reports conclusively reveal that if anyone ran into Pinto at over 30 miles

per hour,

Continued…..

Rear end of the car would buckle right up to the back

seat.

Spark from a cigarette, ignition, or scraping metal, and both cars

would be engulfed in flames.

Tube would be ripped away and gas would slosh onto the

road.

Buckled gas tank would be jammed up.

Kamrul Hasan Id no.091343

Pinto Green Book Ford executive F.G. Olsen published Pinto Green Book by the Society of Automotive

Engineers. He listed these product objectives as follows:

• Size

• Weight True

Subcompact

• Initial price

• Fuel consumption

• Reliability

• Serviceability

Low Cost of Ownership

•Appearance

•Comfort

•Features

•Ride and handling

•Performance

Clear Product Superiority

Risk-Benefit Analysis

Burn Deaths

Burn Injuries

Burn Vehicles

Savings

180

180

2100

Unit-costs

$200000

$67000

$700

Sub-Totals

$36000000

$12060000

$1470000

Total Cost

$49 Million

Figure : Benefit

Continued…..

Car Sales Light Truck Sales

Sales 11000000 15000000

Unit Costs $11 $11

Sub-totals $121000000 $16500000

Total Cost $137 Million

Figure : Risks

Daud Al Shams Id no.105038

Evidence indicated that cost of making

improvements to gas tank could have been as low

as $5.08 per vehicle.

If the costs were around $5.08 per vehicle, the

Ford motor company would not have had as strong

a risk/benefit argument as with the $11 figure

provided.

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Ethical issues

Ethical issues

Ford made decision not to make improvements to the gas tank after completion of the risk/benefit analysis.

Ford did not make adjustments to the Pinto design because the $11 cost was too high

Ford did not consider the lives which would be saved if the adjustment was made.

40

Shadi Mohammad Id no.104980

The company chose not to implement the design, which would have cost $11 per car (according to Ford) even though it had done an analysis showing that the new design would result in 180 less deaths.

The company defended itself by saying that it used the accepted risk/benefit analysis to determine if the monetary costs of making the change were greater than the societal benefit.

RISK BENEFIT ANALYSIS VS ETHICS

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• Based on the numbers Ford used, the cost would have

been $137 million versus the $49.5 million price tag put

on the deaths, injuries, and car damages, and thus Ford

felt justified not implementing the design change.

• It is unethical to determine that people should be

allowed to die or be seriously injured because it would

cost too much to prevent it .

Continued….

Some things just can't be measured in terms of dollars, and that includes human life.

Abu Bakker khokon Id no.091267

The Ford Pinto Myth

Constantly brought up as an example of poor business ethics

Use of emotional terms such as "firetrap", "death trap", and "lethal car"

Documents were used to show Ford's lack of concern for safety.

Case was blown out of proportion by media

Recommendations

Effective design reviews

Design and process FEMAs

Measurement-based corrective action (including

customer satisfaction)

Conclusion

Cheap subcompact car released in 1970 under the tagline “the little carefree car”.

Time frame for getting Pinto from conception to

production was 25 months.

Tried to get market share faster than others.

THE END