Imagine speeding along the roadway in your brand new 2011 Chevy 
Cruze, turning your car’s steering wheel, and the wheel breaks off from the steering column! It’s an interesting story (in The Wall Street Journal, April 10,2011) that certainly ties in with our discussion of quality in Chapter 6.
Of course, it’s every driver’s nightmare, but in particular to the person who it happened to a few weeks ago. As a result, GM is recalling 2,100 new cars and facing an unwelcome development while it rides high on the compact Cruz’s sales success.
According to the NHTSA (Nat’l Highway Transportation Safety Admin.), the wrong wheel was put in this particular car, then replaced later with the correct one. But the new wheel was not attached properly.
This raises some good issues to discuss in teaching quality in class. First, how did the wrong wheel end up on the assembly line? (JIT delivery gone awry? What was the root cause of this defect?)
Second, why was it that a wrong wheel could fit on the column? (No poka-yoke system in place?)
Third, was there no Andon call signal to alert supervisors that such a problem had popped up? (Could it have happened before and no one pointed it out? Had it happened at a different plant? Is there a struggle to change from the old Detroit mentality that the line should never be stopped?)
Chevrolet says “it has changed the production process to make sure the machine used to attach the steering wheel can accommodate only the correct one”. I like this story because it raises several teachable issues.