Question

You have heard how it is often necessary to ship first and then quickly update. Takata has come into the news recently. Out of the millions of airbags installed, many have been deployed. A few have deployed with such force that shrapnel has injured and killed the occupants in the car. A car manufacturer may use as many as six airbags in a car. A typical plant might produce 2,000 cars a day, and use 12,000 airbags a day. The data for the number of defective airbags in those that have deployed is about 1 in 10,000. Assume that the promised reliability is 1 defective in 100,000. Diagnose the problem using what you learned about acceptance sampling, SPC, and design of experiment: ·

What is the problem? ·

How could the problem have been prevented? Be sure to identify specific points, vendor Takata, Takata’s vendors, automakers Toyota receiving inspection, process control, design of experiment

Answer 1

The main problem in the given case is that the accepted reliability of the airbag is 1 failure out of 100000 while in actual, the reliability is 10 times less than the accepted range that is the airbags fail in every 10,000 bags.

In order to prevent this issue, it is important that the company look at the raw material provided by the suppliers, and the chances of error in the airbag manufacturing. Apart from this, when the company receives the airbags from the suppliers, each airbag lot has to be checked for the possible defects. This will make sure that the chances of failure of the airbag can be controlled effectively.

The company can also look at the designing of the airbag and try to find out any possible incidences of design mistakes. This will help in dealing with the failure of airbags. The company can also propose to have the airbag designed by ts won designers for greater functionality and reliability.