Those who live in a Glass Factory...
I have long been fond of German cars, inspite of their low reliability ratings. Over the years, Mercedes, BMW, Audi, and Volkwagen have been consistently ranking near the bottom of the reliability chart. Many reasons have been proferred by experts."For some high-end carmakers, like Mercedes-Benz, technology has proven to be the Achilles heel... At a time when the average development time of new cars has shrunk from five years to 32 months, not enough so-called "soak-testing" time to establish the reliability of these new devices was allotted.
The root of the problem at more mass-market manufacturers like VW is a bit harder to pinpoint. Faulty advanced electronics may have a bit to do with it, but most models are not nearly as complex as those of, say, Mercedes-Benz. Experts can only guess." [Link]
Unlike the Americans, who introduced mass assembly-line manufacturing (thanks to Ford) and the Japanese, who embraced and perfected it (thanks to Toyota), the Europeans have long held the artisan mindset to car manufacture. Making cars was long considered a highly skilled and labor intensive process. Creating a masterpiece required craftsmen with all-round skills in machining, tooling, trouble-shooting, painting etc, not the micro-specialization of the assembly line worker. The stress was on creating a work of art, not six-sigma minimization of error rates. Quality control was the last step of the production process, with significant time and effort spent on repairing, retooling or recycling faulty product.
The marriage of this mindset with the robotic efficiency of assembly line production has produced fascinating results. The transparent Volkswagen factory in Dresdon is one such example. So proud are the Germans of this plant that they offer daily guided tours of the Phaeton plant, complete with driving simulators, multimedia displays and piano concerts (rollover the German flag, bottom left, to view in English). To be fair, very few companies can pull off superior design and execution - Apple being a notable exception.
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Having an entire factory be transparent and spotlessly clean seems sybaritic - I can't imagine their maintenance and cleaning costs, not to mention the pressure on workers in that setting (no grease or grime, no unruly tools, fully tucked-in shirts - there's people watching!). But it has its benefits: for one, implementing the 5S's of workplace organization should be a cinch!
Seiri: Tidiness - Throw away rubbish and unrelated materials in the workplace, everything in place
Seiton: Orderliness - Everything in its proper place for quick retrieval and storage
Seiso: Cleanliness - Clean the workplace; everyone should be a janitor
Seiketsu: Standardized clean-up - Standardize the way of maintaining cleanliness
Shitsuke: Discipline - Do 'Five S' daily - make it a way of life; this also means 'commitment' [Link]
As an aside, VW does not seem to have privacy concerns about their factory. Wonder whether this is symptomatic of the usual European acceptance of low privacy, or whether they use it as a PR / recruitment tool. As the latter, it can be powerful, though one could argue about the cost-benefit! Adobe has a similar phototour of their San Jose facilities [link] which made it seem like an awesome place to work, as does Pixar [Link] . I would love to see tours of Apple, Amazon, Tiffany and MGM.
