We're not quite sure what to call this! And we're not quite sure what it'll look like So what is it!? Well, it's a forum. Dialogue. A virtual meeting. An on-line conference. A content briefing. A network event – putting people with similar interests together. It'll be whatever works for whoever contributes, with active intervention and a two-week life-cycle. And it's an experiment. Starting here, this week, with what may be the 'quality' story of the year ... Firestone's tyre recall. Got a comment, question, contribution ... or whatever ... on the subject of the Firestone recall? Send it in. We'll encourage the experts, opinion-formers and practitioners from among the extended, international, Award community to add their contributions ... explanations, amplifications, references, best practice, model answers and examples There'll be a fixed term for each topic – we want to get to the end and settle on an outcome The 'discussion' will be actively managed (by your site editor) to add as much value as possible – we'll throw in material from other sources, list contemporary material, raid the literature and dam the e-stream … much more than just 'moderate' Maybe publish a 'white paper' that summarises the results We'll be interested in hearing from individuals and firms with practitioner or proprietary interests in the subject area Here's a 12 August news item on the subject. And here's an August 15 story about a class action against Firestone. Here's some background - two posts to the Deming Electronic Network on the Firestone story: Deja Vu at Firestone (1) by Frank Voehl, posted Thursday, 10 Aug 2000 The current woes of the Firestone Tire Co. stir memories of their record recall back in 1978 of some 14 million tires, of which they replaced over 8 million. As they did twenty years ago, Firestone has once again mishandled concerns about the safety of its tires by not addressing concerns from dealers and consumers more quickly, waiting until it appeared that they were acting under pressure from Federal officials and corporate customers. The Firestone 500 fiasco of 1978 became shorthand for the lowest point in the tiremakers 100 year history with a cost of over $150 million, not counting the cost of lost confidence and goodwill, which eventually brought the company to its knees and into the fold of the Japanese tire giant, Bridgestone, ten years later. As was the issue in 1978, the same lack of priority in nourishing their corporate image seems to be lacking today at Firestone with their apparent foot-dragging and stonewalling tactics. The lack of information led to panic and confusion among customers. At many Firestone Tire Centers across the nation, customers were told to either come back at a later time, or leave their vehicles there all day, or make an appointment for an inspection in a month or two. And this is after the recall announcement! As in the case of the Johnson and Johnson Tylenol tampering case of 1982, we are dealing with safety, deaths, and trust. Unlike the J&J leadership--who proactively protected their customers--Firestone waited too long and clearly should have made their move sooner, not after 45 deaths were linked to their product. They made a mistake, screwed up, and now they will certainly pay a heavy price. Clearly, all of the foundations of SoPK were violated in this situation, especially the Psychology of how to handle an obvious quality-control design problem. I remember discussing the original Firestone 500 problem with Dr. Deming back in the mid-1980s. My comment back then was that they were burning the toast, and scraping it clean, instead of fixing the toaster, and hiding the burnt toast evidence under the rug. His response was a story about a young man who was afraid to point out problems because he did not want to be labelled a whistle-blower, so he kept his mouth shut and the plant he worked at went out of business. *Could he have saved the plant,* thundered Dr. Deming? *Who knows? We will never know because the system has failed us once again.* What he was referring to was the failure of the system to facilitate the upward flow of bad news. This was one of the big problems with the NASA Space Program, one that has continued to plague it to this day. Good management will solicit recommendations from employees, act on the good ones, and describe in detail the reasons for not acting upon the others, thereby earning the respect of the workers and customers alike. Dr. Deming taught us that mutual respect among management, workers, and customers is essential to eliminate fear and promote constructive activity. Fear operates in the dark and in the shadows, often stonewalling everything around it. Hitler once called *overpowering fear the weapon which most conquers reason, terror, and violence.* Firestone's response to all this was: *Again, we apologize to our customers, the media, and the general public for any confusion that has been created.* Unfortunately, that is not nearly enough. What is clearly needed at Firestone is a healthy dose of SoPK, if it is not too late. and (2), by Del Nelson of the American River College and the "soon to be": Deming Virtual College First, I would like to thank Frank for his great input on the Firestone situation. In brief, we see in the Firestone case a perfect example of the absence of the SoPK. We are looking at what happens without an Appreciation for a System, as noted in my earlier message on the need to change our 21st century focus from parts to the system. Even as my signature block notes, "When "We, the people..." Are replaced by dollar$, profit$, and greed, It is time to start over." And, in this situation, the system of "We the people" was surpressed and replaced by focusing on a "part," the internal profit structure of an "internal system" (the same problem I noted with the pseudo Deming-based class on "systems"). And, in my opinion, which I know will be controversial, the case placed dollars over the value of human lives, and those making that decision are as guilty of those deaths as any of those charged and convicted in international incidents/crimes we have seen over the years, whenever economic gain was achieved at the expense of the death of innocent people. Indeed, I believe that the incident involves intrinsically non-integrious, criminal behavior on the part of those holding organizational decision authority. This is further validated by the news that the company actually allowed the continuing sale of the tires in the Untied States knowing such sales had been ended, for safety reason, in other countries. On 17 August, Linda Ortberg, Tarrant County College wrote on the DEN: ... this case will be a required topic of study for the upcoming fall semester for students to follow and study as the case proceeds. I did a bit of research myself after a CNN report yesterday. Following is part of an article from the Sunday (13 August?) Washington Post. Decatur workers engaged in practices such as puncturing bubbles on tires to cover up flaws on products that should have been scrapped. Conditions in the plant, particularly high humidity from a lack of air conditioning in some areas, made it more likely that corrosion would occur on the brass-coated steel in the steel-belted radial tires. Employees had powerful financial incentives to release botched tires to the motoring public. And, to meet stringent quotas, inspections of finished tires were often virtually nonexistent, two of the workers said in testimony for a lawsuit that Firestone settled for $375,000 last month in federal court in Manhattan. "If you get behind on the lines, some of the tires pass without being inspected," retired Firestone employee Joe Roundtree, who worked at the plant from 1965 to 1996, said in a sworn deposition on Dec. 16 in Decatur. That testimony in the settled case involved a tire for passenger cars that was not recalled. But the workers' testimony was not unique to that type of tire, which was made during the same period that Firestone ATXs were produced at Decatur. The six workers are scheduled to testify in 10 days about the same practices in a Florida lawsuit filed over a traffic accident involving a 1996 Ford Explorer riding on ATX tires, like those recalled, in which two people were killed. Medhat Labib and his family were traveling on Interstate 95 last October after a wedding rehearsal dinner when the vehicle's Firestone ATX P235/75R15 tire blew. Labib's wife and 9-year-old son were killed and he was left paralyzed below the waist. The tires' Transportation Department serial number indicated they were made in Decatur, said Bruce Kaster, the Ocala, Fla., attorney representing Labib. Labib, 48, said last night he wished the recall had come a year ago. "I would have been the first one in line to change the tires," he said. Bridgestone/Firestone yesterday adamantly defended the quality of the work in the Decatur plant. Plaintiffs' attorneys call the allegations a significant development in their cases because the claims undercut a key defense for Bridgestone/Firestone: In virtually all of the more than 100 lawsuits filed against Bridgestone/Firestone, the company has blamed the motorist for abusing the tires--driving over roadway debris that punctured the tires, which allowed moisture to get in and caused the leakage of air. Under-inflation of tires also is a factor in causing the separation of the tread from the carcass of the tires, leading to the vehicle crashes, company executives said. Company officials accused the two workers who have testified of being disgruntled former employees. "These are employees who left the company during the strike and returned after the strike," spokesman Tim Beecher said. "Both told the company they had significant issues with the employer." In the lawsuits, Bridgestone/Firestone denied the workers' charges and aggressively questioned them in pre-trial depositions. Company attorneys forced them to acknowledge that they had received several quality reprimands during their lengthy careers, court records show. The workers also had been active in the local union, which staged a bitter strike in 1994 and 1995. All six employees left in 1995 or 1996. Kaster, who subpoenaed the former employees to testify, staunchly defended the workers, saying they were paid based on whether they met production quotas imposed under onerous circumstances. "It is not the fault of the workers," he said. "They are doing the best they can under adverse working conditions." Clarence Wood, who worked at the plant until 1996, said in a signed statement that workers, who were paid on a piecework salary program, protested--to no avail--that quality was being sacrificed for quantity. "When inspectors complained about tires not being right, the response from management would be, 'You don't understand the tire business,' " Wood said. "We knew the tires were bad." After Bridgestone took over the plant following its acquisition of Firestone in 1988, workers were instructed to deflate bubbles and blisters on the tire's inner liner by lancing them with an awl--a tool with a handle and a pointed instrument similar to an ice pick--two employees testified. The awl is inserted through the tread, both steel belts and both body plies to the inner liner to allow the air to be forced from the blister back through the carcass of the tire. Three other workers are prepared to testify in sworn depositions later this month that the practice continued into the mid-1990s. The company-issued awl would puncture the tire and allow air to be forced from the blister or bulge, and this process was "something that occurred on an ongoing basis . . . and was open and obvious," Roundtree said in a written statement for federal court. The way tires are made today, the puncture would not be enough to prevent the tire from being inflated. Richard Tucker, another Decatur employee scheduled to testify this month, said a problem would still exist. "The punctured tire would be sent to the warehouse to go into the marketplace," Tucker is prepared to say, according to a witness-disclosure statement filed in court. The workers' reports of lancing tires to fix blisters has been known for months by a cluster of trial lawyers suing Bridgestone/Firestone on behalf of accident victims and their families. Bridgestone/Firestone attorneys said in court documents that Roundtree said he never personally witnessed the deliberate puncturing of steel-belted radials. They also said that Wood acknowledged it was against company policy to puncture the inner liner of steel-belted radials and that procedures required them to be scrapped. Another controversial practice that was prevalent in the Decatur plant for decades, into the 1990s, involved swabbing a solvent on the out-of-date stock used to make the tires, the workers said. The stock, which is made from a broth of rubber and other chemicals, remained sticky or adhesive for only a limited number of days. When the stock aged and lost its adhesiveness, the workers said, they swabbed solvents, similar to benzene, on the stock to make it sticky again. If the solvent evaporated there wasn't a problem. But the tire could be severely flawed if the solvent was left on the tire when it was vulcanized, or cooked at high temperatures to meld the rubber and steel belts together. The risks of using solvents in tire-making was explained by James D. Gardner, an expert witness who works for Bridgestone/Firestone. He testified in a deposition in an unrelated case last month. "If you get pockets of solvent left in the tire, that could be a problem," he said. "It would turn to a vapor when you heated it in the vulcanization and that would blow all sorts of holes in the tire there." As a result, Gardner testified, Firestone has reined in the practice in recent years. "As a general rule, we don't use much solvent," he said. But Lonnie Dart, a Firestone employee for 32 years until 1996, is expected to testify that "globs of solvent was sometimes left on rubber. The outside surface would dry, but the excess solvent remained wet," according to a witness-disclosure statement filed in state court in Brevard County, Fla. The final major quality problem in Decatur, the workers said, was that steel-belt cords were exposed to humidity, which can permit condensation to form. "Oftentimes there would be perspiration on the outside of the belt cords in the area where they spliced together," Wood said. That's important because moisture could cause corrosion that could hamper the adhesion to the rubber at the weakest point of the tire and the very place where most of the tire failures occur, said experts who testified for plaintiffs and Firestone. Former Decatur plant worker Roundtree rejected Firestone's suggestion that his testimony was biased. He said that because he was Christian he has gotten past the bitter issues surrounding the strike. "I'm not here to slam Firestone," Roundtree testified. "I'm here to tell as close to the truth as I know it on how the tire production is at Firestone." © 2000 The Washington Post Company Incidently, a large sign outside the Decatur, Illinois plant displays the words, "ISO 9000 Certified". " ISO 14000 Certified". Why am I not taking comfort in this? The students for the coming fall semester can look forward to researching the case as it progresses and to discussing relevant topics such as ETHICS, standards, the Red Beads and lessons derived, MBO, SoPK, to name just a few. I wish it wasn't so.