Japanese engineering superior to ours?...

So are you dismissing a Japanese car made in the US? I mean, are you looking at the name or the location?

 

Are you aware the first generation VUEs had high rollover tendencies because the suspension was so cheaply/badly designed that it bent/failed under load?

I fear to buy any vehicle from a company callous and willing to put it out that kind of quality.

 

OK, I just wanted to be sure as my 1990 Ford Probe was made at the Mazda plant in Dearborn, MI.

 

Keep in mind that Toyota had 978K recalls last month.

GM had 800K last month, but 2 million the prior month. SO this isn't really a fair comparison, but let's say GM had 2.8 million the last few months, and Toyota had one million.

GM sells more than 2X as many cars as Toyota.

Toyota is actually not far off the GM recall pace! :lol:

 

1) Yes, I think a large part of the problem is that US Corporations are too near-sighted (immediate $$$) vs the long term benefits and vision.
2) I don't think there is much, if any, difference in the precision of their equipment or skills.
3) & 4) Yes, I think they are probably trained better. Fewer Japanese engineers and workers probably believe their car company exists solely for their own personal benefit than you would find in a US plant. The US factory workers have gotten fat, dumb, and happy, IMHO. I knew assembly line workers 20+ years ago who were making $25 an hour, I hate to imagine what it is now. Unions, materialism, corporate greed, poor vision, and poor attitudes in general have made the Big 3 unable to react quickly to market changes or competition. This was all too clear in the 1980's when ALL the major US car manufacturers made alliances with Japanese car companies, in order to get back in touch with what kind of cars and technology they needed to be offering. I think those cooperative years made some very nice, needed changes in car design and efficiency, but the US manufacturers have now turned many of those efficiencies into pure horsepower. But, even when they do properly utilize the technology, they are still encumbered by the tremendous amount of debt and overhead they have accumulated over the years, so their only recourse is to produce a cheap, inferior car in order to meet a price point where their cars will sell.
Just my opinion, for what its worth......

 

Not too sure about the automotive industry, but I am a young engineer in the defense industry. My company has customers all around the world (including Japan).

As for training, my company will pay for your master’s degree including books. Actually, many engineering companies here in the US will offer tuition assistance of some kind. I remember at a career fair, I asked the rep from Honda R&D USA if they will pay for my masters. They told me Honda can teach you better at making cars than any school. Which could be true. But another reason might be they are not willing to pay the extra cost. But I am not sure about the companies in Japan.

As for instruments, Agilent (a US company, spin off of HP) is known for their precision instruments. I don't know who can top them in that field.

In general, I think each company/country has their own specialized knowledge. Can’t really say if US is better or Japan is better in engineering.

 

"Superior" engineering? Hmmm I honestly have no clue. I contract work for a large privately-held global engineering firm and every region seems to have a specialty area.

How about better "applied" engineering? The Big Three have come up with many innovative things over the decades but still somehow managed to completely fubar the introduction.

Anybody remember how GM single-handedly destroyed the diesel car market in North America by converting their 350 V8 to run on diesel? That set the rollout of efficient North American cars back by two decades.

I think in the final analysis we have to put a lot of the blame on clueless management. A lot of the automotive execs are complete boobs who pointedly ignore global realities - at our expense of course.

 

I think it is not engineering but a company's long term strategy among executives.

Toyota started the G21 project in 1993, and the result was intruducing mass production Prius in 1997.
In the States, they started the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV) project in 1993.
I don't know the results of the PNGV project.
Would someone please expain?

Ken@Japan

 

I really don't think there is a great difference in the capabilities of the engineers in any country. It's the damn corporate beaners that is the problem. If most companies dumped 2/3's of their beaners and let the engineers engineer NA would be further down the evolutionary road. I fix the beaner induce problems almost every day. I could give you 500 examples in short order but I won't bore you.

 

Where did anyone mention recalls? I thought this was about engineering.

 

Bingo!

 

Oh... engineering?

Are there any major Japanese CPU companies?

Or software companies?

Cars aren't everything...

 

If by 'beaners' you mean accountants, I think you're blaming the wrong people. An accountant's job (aside from generating your paycheque) is to provide information to the people who make the decisions. Don't shoot the messenger.

Do Japanese companies have fewer accountants than North American companies?

 

Toshiba? I reference IBM-Sony-Toshiba's Cell processor... yeah, that's a lot of IBM technology there too, but it's a joint effort.

Software companies... how about game developers? Those are pretty important software companies if you ask me, and something the Japanese know how to do really well.

All good engineering if you ask me...

I call it... picking their battles wisely. Japans not only about exporting technology, but also lots of culture. Stuff like Playstation and games ties in right with the culture-power idea.

 

If you have doubts about the quality of engineering in the U.S. please read the book "Skunk Works" by B. R. Rich and L. Janos. It discusses the development of the U-2, SR71 Blackbird and the Stealth fighter. Unfortunately the system have made such new productions very difficult, not the loss of engineering skills.

The original Skunk Works that made such huge strides in aviation, some of which have still never been exceeded (SR-71) was run by engineers and entripenuers (sp?) unfettered by management, accountents or even end-users. No longer.

When I read the book "Prius that shook the world" the approach Toyota took was very similar to the early days of the skunk works, including the secrecy and the absence of interference.

That said, I am not sure that a commercial enterprise that must provide a profit and is more answerable to stockholders and others, could approach the level of use of good engineering that the aviation, astronaught, nuclear or other high level engineer and scientific enterprises in the U.S. attained.

I spent a lot of years flying American machinery off of aircraft carriers and have a lot of faith in the engineering that kept my nice person out of the water. Most of it far surpassed what I saw from other nation's production. Certainly, many of the ideas of carrier aviation came from GB but American engineering capitalized on it and improved it.

Unfortunately, the American corporate environment does not lend itself easily to improvisation.

 

Renesas Technology Corp.,
http://www.renesas.com/

 

we are looking at the wrong question. american engineering is hampered by american profiteering much more than japanese companies. it took a huge gamble and commitment by Toyota to develope and produce a hybrid. they didnt do it because they were smarter design wise, they did it because they were smarter marketing wise. the big 3 designed diesel hybrids in 2000 but wined because they would have been too expensive to mass produce.

but it wasnt engineers giving up before even trying to figure out the hurdles. it was management, who btw, cant see beyond the current quarters profit and loss statement.

as far as engineering goes and technology, i still believe the US can compete with anyone in the world... if allowed to do so.