CRITICAL THINKING EXERCISES 1. Consider an auto assembly operation. What kinds of quality problems can arise during assembly? Name one or two. How can each be fixed? Prevented? 2. A few years ago, Ford asked Mazda to build some of the transmissions for a car it was selling in North America. 14 Both Ford and Mazda were supposed to build to identical specifications. Ford adopted the traditional view of quality, that a part is good if its dimension falls within spec limits. Mazda adopted the Taguchi quality loss function view of quality. After the cars had been on the road for a while, it became clear that Ford's transmissions were generating far higher warranty costs and many more customer complaints about friction noise and vibration. Ford disassembled and carefully measured samples of transmission gears made by both companies. Both companies' gear dimensions were within the spec limits but Ford's were uniformly distributed within the spec limits whereas Mazda's were Normally distributed centred on the targets. Explain how two randomly chosen Ford interacting gears would have higher probability of causing friction or vibration than two randomly chosen Mazda interacting gears. [ LO2