Takata told to improve quality process

A woman arranges airbag cushions at a plant for Japanese car parts maker Takata Corp. in Sibiu, 280km (175 miles) northwest of Bucharest, in this September 4, 2006 file photo. Romania is fighting to attract firms like Takata which bring in technology, jobs and hard currency, badly needed in the poor former Soviet satellite whose entry date to the EU will be announced on September 26. Picture taken September 4, 2006. To match feature EU ROMANIA AUTOS. REUTERS/Mihai Barbu (ROMANIA) - RTR1HHU2

A woman arranges airbag cushions at a plant for Japanese car parts maker Takata Corp. in Sibiu, 280km (175 miles) northwest of Bucharest, in this September 4, 2006 file photo. Romania is fighting to attract firms like Takata which bring in technology, jobs and hard currency, badly needed in the poor former Soviet satellite whose entry date to the EU will be announced on September 26. Picture taken September 4, 2006. To match feature EU ROMANIA AUTOS. REUTERS/Mihai Barbu (ROMANIA) - RTR1HHU2

Published Feb 4, 2016

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Washington DC - Embattled airbag maker Takata has been told by an independent panel to improve management oversight and automation as the faulty airbag scandal continues to rock the global auto industry.

The panel, commissioned Takata and led by Samuel Skinner, a former US secretary of transportation, said the company needed to strengthen its quality culture after its airbags caused at least 10 deaths worldwide from sudden explosions.

Safety regulators in the United States have discovered that the inflators attached to the airbags can rupture, sending shrapnel into occupants of cars. Some of the focus of investigations is on the stability of the chemical propellant in the inflators.

The Skinner panel was not charged with finding what went wrong to create the faulty airbag problem, but instead to see how the company, which is accused of covering up the problem for years, should reform going ahead.

It found that Takata's program for monitoring the quality of its airbags, installed in tens of millions of cars worldwide, was poorly designed and structured, and relied too much on the automakers' oversight.

Its report said: “There is no stand-alone Takata programme aimed at identifying quality-related problems with its products once they are in the vehicle fleet. And there are limited formal systems for consolidating and analysing what information Takata does collect.”

How do airbags actually work?

The panel also pointed to one potential immediate problem with the airbags: The inflator propellant is often loaded by hand, not machine.

“Some of the safety-critical aspects of Takata's operations are done manually,” it said. “In particular, Takata should move toward full automation of propellant loading and look for opportunities to increase machine assistance in airbag folding.”

The panel pointed to other key weaknesses in Takata's corporate organisation: It can move product designs to production even with outstanding questions unresolved and it has no clear “ownership” of a product, that is, an individual or team charged to watch how it performs after it is developed.

“Takata product programmes (i.e. propellants, airbag inflators, and airbag modules in development) undergo multiple handoffs during their lifetimes,” the report said. “No one person or team is currently specifically tasked with monitoring a product once it is in the fleet.”

Skinner said that overall Takata's corporate organisation and processes are fairly strong, but could become more rigorous if the panel's views are implemented.

“We expect Takata to implement our recommendation,” he said. “It's clear that they need to take some steps and it appears that they are committed to do so.”

Takata continues to face various probes internationally into the airbag problem even as it struggles to help replace those already installed in millions of cars by most of the world's largest automakers.

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