The title should be "Why don't people buy cars from American companies anymore?" What are considered "American Cars" or "Domestic Cars" are really the foreign cars, build mainly in Mexico, China, and Canada. Companies like the Big 3 (Ford, Chrysler, General Motors) are portraying themselves as American Companies that are trying to save United States jobs are busy moving factories outside of our borders just to increase their dividends at the end of the quarter. While these companies are building vehicles outside of our country, they are slandering the companies that do build vehicles inside our nation. Companies like Nissan and Toyota, are getting ridiculed for being based out of Japan, yet they still produce more vehicles here in the USA then the Big 3 does.

While the "Domestic" companies are suffering loses not only on the bottom line, but also with the quality of their products. Take for example the Ford Explorer Sport Trac Adrenalin, within 3 weeks of purchasing this vehicle, it had to visit the dealership to have the transmission replaced. The life of the vehicle was 2 years, and it had over 15 trips to the dealership for major repairs, repairs that needed two days or more to fix. Now take the Nissan Z series, this series has been around since the dawn of racing. After 15 years they still turn over with a presence of power, and do not need to be dragged to the dealership for repairs.

The difference between the Big 3 and Japan based companies is the mindset of the companies from the line workers to the CEO. Most Japan based companies use Lean Manufacturing, instead of the typical batch production that the "Domestic" companies use. Lean Manufacturing eliminates defects and waste by producing with a one-piece-flow. Each process of the assembly line inspects the product as it is passed to them, if they find a problem, they either pull it off line or tag it so downstream operators know not to continue working on the piece. Also with one-piece-flow the operators only work on the products that are passed to them by upstream operators, instead of batch production where an operator produces as many parts as they can within a time period. Production using one-piece-flow saves money by eliminating defects and not using inventory that is not needed.

Companies that are downing well have a higher moral than companies that are not upholding to their tangibles. This follows down to the line operators that then want to put effort into their job and keep the company's name respected. The simple reason Americans are not buy "Domestic" cars is due to the lack of quality in their cars, which can not be changed unless the whole "Domestic" companies mindset is transformed into a Lean production system where quality is key and is the duty of every member of that company.

Learn more about this author, James Stayer.
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