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especially at long bridge with a bit of sabotage thrown in
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like all walks of life problems occur because staff want an easy life as it were, when i worked at honda, the factory is split into zones, if you found a problem in your zone that may have happened in your zone (ie. scratched paintwork) then the adopted practice was to 'overlook' it and another zone would pick it up and then blame couldn't be aportioned to an individual. if all the zones did the same think then you've got a car going out with damage. thats not always the case, some things are overlooked, paperwork isn't done correctly ie. car sat in repair bay, paperwork is finished before work is done to get it logged and the figures in, someone else comes along paperworks finished car goes out with problem still. alongside other things such as items cut very close to tolerance, or maybe just over then it fails quickly.
as said it happens in all walks of life and not just car factorys, it just happens that cars are a reasonably expensive commodity so people expect them to be perfect.
chris
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There was an unproven allegation that the Peugeot factory at Ryton only built cars on Friday afternoons!
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Armitage Shanks {p}
I personally think the public automatically assume that new French cars won't be reliable and resale values awful for lovely large new Peugeot 407s and the superb looking Citroen C5 (I adore it's looks). Remember both cars share the same diesel engines with the new Ford Mondeo (as popular as it is, the new Mondeo doesn't have fantastic resale value even though the car is an enormous improvement).
Citroen and Peugeot are now run with a lot of shared parts. I heard a very important speech by a high positioned person at Peugeot. They deliberately plan amazing cars at the top of certain sections even if they don't sell too many of those top models. It is the trick VW did with the Phoeton (which is largely Bentley).
I personally love the looks of the big French cars. Judging by the success of the new C4 Picassos (7 seaters and 5 seaters), Citroen has upped their game big time. I know the man the other day was mentioning about Peugeot properly competing against the German makes.
The resale values mainly affect people who sell a car after about three years or so. My present very reliable Seat, I just let it last long with a large mileage to get good value from it, as the resale value for my car is awful.Once the large mileage 157,000 miles and the years (a 1999 car) pass by, if it's good keep it.
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Friday afternoon cars syndrome occurs in most industries. When I worked in the Pharmacutecal Industry, Quality Control soon identified that batches of Antibiotics made after "going out time" on both Friday and Saturday nights were the ones most likely to fail the checks, and this was so consistant that as an experiment (which lasted 3 months) no batches were to be started after 19.30hrs (start time for night shifts). All the night shift had to do on these nights was finish off work in progress, then sit in the canteen or smoke-pens for the rest of the night. May sound great at first, but after 3months we were glad of something to do again! and the experiment worked, batch standard improved on a par with normal weekday production.
As most cars are built by "robots", i'm not sure if this tactic would have quite the same effect on standard of build, thats if "friday Afternoon" syndrome can occur in the first instance on a highly mechanised production line. Unless they now build Robots with a conscience!.
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No such thing as a "Friday afternoon car";problems can occur anytime of the week.
Exactly. Parts for a car which came off the production line on Friday afternoon would have been manufactured and sub-assembled on all sorts of days at all sorts of locations. I think some people use the expression knowing it's just a figure of speech, but equally I'm sure some people take it literally.
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I'll report on my new C5 shortly; I collected it on Saturday. I agree about re-sale time prices but luckily I can afford this 'extravagance' and I too enjoy the big French cars and their wonderful suspension and internal silence.
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I took delivery of a new Honda CR-V last year (the out-going shape, not the new 'squatting toad' shape!), delivered to my house on a transporter with 16 miles on the clock. So far the local Honda dealership has replaced the windscreen wiper motor (never worked from day one), completed work on the front suspension due to loud thumps when accelerating and turning the wheels at the same time, replaced a faulty trim item, repaired the cigarette lighter, the tailgate had a dent on the inside located on the bottom lip - I didn't notice this until it scored the top of the rear bumper after constant opening and closing of the tailgate. Honda did suggest that I had put the dent there myself but after pointing out the damage was obviously caused in the factory before it was sprayed they relented and fixed the dent and put a complete new bumper on the car. I'm still not happy with the panel gaps on the bonnet, grill and both wings and the engine makes an alarming rattling sound for two seconds when accelerating past 2200 revs (it's the diesel 2.2), however it's due the first service now and they have promised to address these problems. On my last visit to Honda I joked to the mechanic (who I know quite well now!) that I had got a "Friday Afternoon Car", he just raised his eyebrows and said " Yep, it happens" . So there you go, straight from the horses mouth! Having said all this about the CR-V, it's still got two years warranty left, it lugs the family + dog everywhere, and fair play to Honda - their service department is very customer orientated and have resolved all the problems with minimum fuss.
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"delivered to my house on a transporter with 16 miles on the clock."
Sounds as if you got it via a broker. I do wonder who does the pre-delivery inspection in these cases. Is the supplying dealer's motivation quite as great if they know they will never see the ultimate customer? Your good local dealer might well have spotted most of the faults if they had done the PDI.
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Congratulations EdV. The C5 is a truly beautiful car. It also seems to be well made. Good choice!!
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Avant said >> Sounds as if you got it via a broker. I do wonder who does the pre-delivery inspection in these cases. Is the supplying dealer's motivation quite as great if they know they will never see the ultimate customer? Your good local dealer might well have spotted most of the faults if they had done the PDI. >>
That's sounds like there might be something in it. Any similar thoughts/experience?
Edited by Optimist on 03/06/2008 at 12:35
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forget the pre delivery inspection, all of those faults should of been picked up by the final line inspection, both the plants in swindon that build the crv and civic have a long section of the production line at the end just before it goes on the test track that are supposed to check all features work and there's no damage. as i said earlier in this thread people don't raise the problems due to honda's attitude to staff and also paperwork gets messed up.
chris
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Lud mentioned the Skoda Estelle. Back in the 70's and 80's I used to work on them.
Skoda's explanation for 'Friday afternoon' cars didn't have much to do with the human element - more to do with the luck of the draw.
Manufacturing tolerances weren't so finely controlled in those days, and on the production line a series of bodies with window apertures just within limits could easily be fitted with a series of window glasses just within limits (but in the wrong direction), leading to leaks from new.
Mechanical bit's were the same, Slightly undersized pistons could be fitted into slightly oversized cylinders and so on. All within manufacturing tolerances though, and the Estelle had an adjustable oil pressure warning light switch to take care of crankshaft / oil pump matching problems.
During production most cars turned out to be sort of average, but some - where the bit's matched well, turned out to be good. The not so good un's were made of within tolerance mismatched parts.
The Friday one's ended up with everything being mismatched, a dodgy set of spark plugs, a duff oil seal, and a dicky radio. Nothing to do with assembly workers !
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I had a Volvo S40 that must have been a "Friday overnight after downing 16 pints in the local pub" job.
5 pages of faults by the time it was a year old,a nd most parts replaced. Rust (yep!) had to get taken out and sorted, and the dealers had to provide me with 5 itres of oil every copple of weeks since I couldn't get more than 400 miles to a litre - even after new piston rings, vales, camshaft.....
And their Service Department was, to be quite honest, attrocious.
Never had a Volvo since - wonder why? (And I wonder why our company dropped the dealers from the suppliers list!)
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