Automotive Industry Future Blog
a great conversation starts with a great topic
Entry
Last week I received an email from one of the top PLM vendors with this question: "could PLM have prevented the recent recall of Toyota cars?" Earlier today, I was interviewed by a top-tier business magazine, and, perhaps not surprisingly, one of the questions was: "why wasn’t simulation able to predict the increased friction in the accelerator pedal mechanism and prevent the failure?"
My response to both was that no, I did not think that PLM could have prevented the failure altogether. It is my opinion, however, that when used effectively, PLM can reduce the likelihood of failures, expedite root-cause analysis, and the formulation of remedial steps. In the case of a recall, PLM, combined with other tools, can reduce the number of recalled cars, thereby reducing costs and damage to the brand image.
Before I discuss the rational behind my responses, I am interested to hear your opinions whether PLM could have / should have prevented this or similar product failures.
See more on this recall here http://idc-insights-community.com/posts/073f490f43
Comments
Joe, let me first say I have a dog in the fight so take my response with that in mind; but, when it comes to reducing the cost of the recall, it's critical to have the as-built information. PLM, unless it has a loop back from manufacturing, will only have the as-designed information. So, I'd argue that to avoid recalling the haystack because you can't find the needle, you need a manufacturing operations management system across all assembly plants to identify which part/version (in this case pedal, components and software), actually went into which VIN# (or serial#). I can't speak to whether the art of simulation would have been sufficient to predict the failure. But, from what I've read, there was quite a bit of data over a fairly long period of time that, if properly harvested across manufacturing, warrranty/repair, complaints should have provided enough data, if properly analyzed, to respond earlier to the problem and determine the root cause. That would have resulted in fixing the problem sooner, thereby having fewer cars with the faulty pedal (and fewer suspects for containment). Those things would have resulted in the lower cost and less damage to brand that you were speaking of.
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