2005 Buick LaCrosse from North America - Off Topic Comments

What exactly is it that Buick builds good? Have they ventured into another business besides cars? You're talking about this car like it's a Toyota or something. Buick never has, and never will, come even remotely close to building a vehicle as high quality as a Toyota.

Let me make this painfully clear; the Kaizan or the five S are simply what pasty CEOs can do to make themselves feel on top of things. Most failures are theirs, not the worker as they cost cut products and insure the demise of the company such as the big three. I fail to understand how some business degree holding goof can possibly think that making the product worse is good for business.

Back to the Japanese work ethic; well I use to work for one of these North American plants. It was under Japanese supervision. May I say those hard working managers left around five every day.

Secondly, they did very little to see what was happening on the floor.

Third, they had very little programs to do preventive maintenance. Heck I have pictures to prove this. In fact it took them a month to replace parts to a robotic welding arm that was seizing and jerking as it attempted to weld. Instead of shutting down, they kept on running. On my own line the robot was getting stuck once a container; that is one out of sixteen parts. Every time I had to go into the booth and do what I could just to get another container. When making between 400 and 500 parts a day, that gets pretty old.

However the best part is that despite your best efforts, they want to blame you. No no, it can't be the Motoman robots, they're made in Japan, so it must be the workers. Yep, it was a real slap in the face.

The mechanics would try their best to fix the robots, however to be honest, they are under qualified to work on those machines. While the workers and the mechanics are trying to squeeze as much as they can out of pathetic equipment, the engineers, both Japanese and American, sit on the butts playing solitaire or something.

So in the end fed up with this lackluster operation, and the fact I was so mad that some nights were sleepless. I decided to take my revenge. I began to take photos of many things so that when I had sufficient proof I could mail them to the media and possible damage the name of the company, especially since they are public. Unfortunately during one Saturday while things just got worse and worse, I finally snapped in part due to the lack of sleep and lack of sugar in my system. And I couldn't even take my breaks, and get some candy as the line was worse than ever before. So I ran as slowly as possible so that the production would be in the red. When lunch break came and my supervisor had to take over, I left without a word. I am sure that he got intimately aquainted with the horrible line, but I doubt that was sufficient to make a difference.

So there is your quality.