 Everyone has seen Maytag's long running commercial about the lonely Maytag repairman bemoaning his situation. And we all believed it. Your mother more than likely owned a Maytag and when it came time for you to buy your first washer, you wanted a Maytag.
Unfortunately things change, and after some major quality hiccups, now it's the Maytag salesman who is bemoaning his loneliness. Maytag's reputation has plunged to the bottom with costly consumer class action lawsuits and numerous quality complaints.
The cost of Maytag's quality problems: the company reported a loss of $9 million in 2004. This was partly as a result of $33.5 million in litigation, according to Industry Week magazine.
Industry Week explains, "The launch of the Neptune front-loading washing machine in March 1997 was a quality nightmare. Rubber seals on doors got moldy. Door latches failed. Computer circuit boards that controlled the machines were buggy. Electric motors conked out. Drainage problems led some customers to complain that their clothes stank, so much that some customers took to calling it the "Stinkomatic. "
Major quality problems get big press and affect a company's reputation. Witness Guidant's Pacemaker problems and Apple's iPod's battery issues, both of which cost their company millions of dollars in litigation and settlements. The auto industry alone spent $14.5 billion to cover the cost of warranty and recall work in 2004.
So with the staggering cost of poor quality, what's a company to do?
The first step is to have a defined quality program and qualified personnel to manage the program. Most companies have these types of programs in place. But this can miss the wider scope of quality issues.
Often major quality problems come from suppliers who do not have effective quality programs in place. Most manufacturers mandate high quality standards from their suppliers, but often offer little assistance to the supplier, who is often smaller and has fewer resources.
One solution to poor quality is for manufacturers to assist their suppliers with quality issues and to develop a comprehensive quality program that includes them. Since resources are usually stretched thin, third party engineering companies often provide such services.
Suppliers who lack effective quality programs often get into a situation where their customer has put their parts into containment, requiring a 100% sort. This solution is a bitter pill for a supplier to swallow and can have a disastrous effect on their profitability. A better solution would be an effective up-front quality program that includes routine sorting used on problem areas and a plan to remedy the root causes of any problems. This is a far more cost effective strategy for the supplier and ultimately the manufacturer.
Continental Design & Engineering provides Quality Engineering, Sorting, Inspection, Reworking and Containment services. We would be happy to help you or your suppliers develop pro-active quality programs that are cost effective and successful in achieving your quality benchmarks. Give us a call today for a free assessment of your quality systems or a quote for cost effective sorting services.
To get more information about Continental, call Bill Nagengast at (765) 778-9999 ext.307 or Tom Epply at (765) 778-9999 ext.317, or scroll down to send us an email.
Wacky Patent of the Week
 Are you a smoker? Do you sometimes feel that your smoking is unacceptable to those around you, or that you have become somewhat isolated due to your habit? Well, thanks to inventor Walter Netschert, there is a solution. The Smoker's Hat, shown here, is designed to be worn on the head of someone who is currently smoking. It includes a fan for taking ambient air into the hat, a filtration, purification, and deionization system, and an exhaust system for blowing the clean air back out.
According to the inventor, this device will "enable the smoking of tobacco-type products without disturbing or threatening nearby non-smokers. " Hmmm. . . if they say so. . .
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