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Quality at Chrysler Corporation in the 1980s - an inside view!
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Feb 4, 2025
How Chrysler assured quality, calculus or cards?, SPC, supplier surveys, and other quality topics from CudaPete #quality #mopar #spc #measurement #classiccars #dodge
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0:04
hello and welcome to another episode of
0:07
motels I'm Dave's minion Cuda Pete and
0:10
we're back again for another episode
0:12
regarding design Supply and manufacture
0:15
of parts for Chrysler cars in the mid
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1980s so in our first episode we looked
0:21
a little bit at what happened in the
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engineering department and what was
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provided to suppliers to make parts from
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today we're going to look at how that
0:30
quality was maintained from outside
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suppliers and what was required of them
0:35
so the first thing we want to do is we
0:37
want to Define quality and a lot of
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people say well I have a high quality
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product I have a lowquality product but
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a lot of people think well quality is
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not really an objective thing it's more
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subjective like love I love my car I
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love my family quality is quite
0:54
different quality is objective it is
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meeting the requirements so you can
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basically say the definition of quality
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is meeting the requirements so if you
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have an item that meets all the
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requirements then you have a high
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quality item if you have an item that
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doesn't meet the requirements then you
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have a lowquality item so but what does
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meeting the requirements mean and
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especially in regards to car parts well
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in our first episode we looked at how we
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establish those metrics using design of
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experiments and once we did that then
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statistical process control control was
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used to measure the performance of the
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parts so that gave an objective
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measurement is the part high quality is
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low quality does it need Improvement or
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is it good to go as is so statistical
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process control or SPC relies on math
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and statistics to gain that metric so
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back when I was starting out I was
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working on one day my boss said hey Pete
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can you see if this process is capable
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so I start working on it and I'm
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crunching numbers away and I'm trying to
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get this done and of course as a young
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engineer I'm trying to do a good job
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when one of the old guys comes over he's
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like chomping on a cigar as you could
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smoke in the office back in those days
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he goes hey Pete what are you doing oh
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well the boss asked me to do this and
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but Pete what are you doing well you
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know I'm calculating goes no no no no no
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you're doing it wrong he goes no no but
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I said yeah and if you're familiar with
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Statistics let bell curve a lot of that
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is integral calculus and that's what I
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was doing so he goes over to his desk
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and he brings back this
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card and it's a formula card and it has
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everything already laid out on it and he
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says here do this just make the
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calculation nobody cares how you got it
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just as long as it's correct and he said
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one thing to remember if you're using
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calculus to do something you're doing it
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wrong there's absolutely no use for it
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and to this day that's true I've been an
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engineer 35 years and I've never had to
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use it again and I've gotten along just
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fine so that was a little bit of a
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learning curve early on um so things
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that were considered part of that was um
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the range and attribute charts and the
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CPK index and the CPK index was
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measuring the capability of a process to
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make sure the process was in control and
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what that means is the process
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repeatable is it eliable do you get
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consistent results all the time meaning
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are your specifications within a certain
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range and are certain attributes being
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met so that's what we were measuring so
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we ALS Al had to rely on our suppliers
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to do this too to get a quality part and
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in order to do that we provided them
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with what we called the supplier quality
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assurance manual and in this manual it
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would it defined to them what what what
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does Chrysler expect from their
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suppliers it provided an accepted
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analytical methods and a way for
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recordkeeping it provided a way for
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drawing and change control to make sure
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that the parts were being made to the
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latest specifications in drawings it
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also provided how to do lot control and
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traceability in case there was a problem
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you could go back and see when where
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that problem occurred and it also had a
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survey to make sure the supplier was
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meeting the quality requirements and
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that was where I came in I used to have
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to go out to the supplier plants I used
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have to review their records sit down
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with them make sure everything was being
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uh complied with make sure that all the
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requirements were being Met look for
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areas of improvement and we did this
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with plants all across the country and
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not only in the US but also in Canada
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Germany Japan and Mexico um because
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there was a global supply chain at that
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point too so that's basically what was
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required from suppliers and how Chrysler
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uh kept track of them at the time to
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make sure that a quality product was
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being delivered if you like this video
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be sure to like And subscribe and if you
4:53
have any comments please leave them
4:54
below thank you very much for watching
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