King Cotton

[Sam Longley 1Participant @samlongley1]

Posted by KWIL on 16/08/2016 10:37:19:

Same goes for those who "nicked" our car industry

Oh come on. Do you really think that the quality of our cars was really worth preserving( & that is nothing to do with the labour)

A story related to me by a Dagenham manager on a trip to Japn was when a jap mentioned the time taken to change the die on a large press. The dagenham plant took 2 days. When the british queried it the Japanese did a change over for them taking a mere 2 hours. The quality of machined japanese components after a few years simply blew our stuff out of the water.

Our car industry like the motorcycle industry was dead . It was not stollen. It died on its feet & that was without the labour issues which prevented any investment

[Ketan SwaliParticipant @ketanswali79440]

Posted by Circlip on 16/08/2016 10:15:58:

Lets also not forget that when the die hards talk about cheap foreign textile imports, the "enterprising" Brits nicked the cotton trade from India originally.

Regards Ian.

Edited By Circlip on 16/08/2016 10:17:09

Ian,

Britian was, is and always will be (in my opinion) a great and enterprising island. The cotton trade…just like any other trade was never Indias to own.

Post Indian Independence 15th August 1947 (69 years yesterday), the cotton trade went up for grabs especially once the Indian Mafia and corrupt politicians of the day started to shoot dead the reputable cotton mill owners and traders and started acquiring said mills and trading operations…but that is another story resigned to history.

By the 1990s, American Cotton was king. I used to buy American cotton, tried to offer the ginning, spinning and weaving work to companies in the U.K., but for one reason or another this was not possible, so offered this work to a factory in China, which blended the American cotton with Chinese cotton (American cotton was the cheapest in the world – because of the subsidies they received), and provided me with a finished fabric which was suitable for printing, and of a better quality then anything which anyone else in the world could provide me – be it form Japan, Korea, or India.

We are great trading island.

Ketan at ARC.

Edited By Ketan Swali on 16/08/2016 11:41:47

[Sam Longley 1Participant @samlongley1]

Posted by Ketan Swali on 16/08/2016 11:39

We are great trading island.

Ketan at ARC.

Was it not Napoleon who said that we are a nation of shop keepers

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Someone posted this video a while back on the mini/Austin metro at Longbridge.

Britain invested a bucketload of cash in "The most up to date factory in Europe"

The rest… as they say… is history…lol

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

God, the Metro was embarassing crap. Almost as bad as the Princess, Ambassador, Allaggro, MontyNoGo, MGF etc etc. The idea suggested in that advert was that is was somehow our patriotic duty to buy rubbish like that. I took the opposite view – the sooner Austin Rover went down the pan, the better. By this time I had discovered Honda bikes, cars and engineering in general.

The original plan for the Rover – Honda partnership was that Rover would build the Honda Legend but after a few vehicles had gone down the line, Honda rapidly saw sense and the result was Swindon.

It wasn't just the talentless leadership at BLMC-Austin-Rover etc but also the quality culture. Like personalities, it's very difficult to change culture by legal means.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Muzzer on 16/08/2016 14:08:46:

God, the Metro was embarassing crap. Almost as bad as the Princess, Ambassador, Allaggro

.

I still treasure the copy of CAR magazine in which the Allegro got an amazingly good review.

That was shortly before the reports that the roof crinkled if you used the supplied jack on what certainly appeared to be] the jacking point on the sill. … A little later, they put 'fillers' into those points; because they were "really" only intended to be used for handling the bare body-shells on the line.

MichaelG.

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

I really really wanted a Brit car in the 80s like a Metro but never had the nerve to buy one even though I did all my own maintenance stuff. The nearest I ever got was a look at a Dolomite 1500 but the Haynes manual was truly scary… they had so many bits when one bit would do…

The worst bit was watching them rust away almost in front of your eyes, Metros seemed to degrade at an alarming rate

I ended up with a Polo MK1f 895cc which was almost indestructible apart from when the suspension collapsed at a major junction the day after its MOT…

Got it home after the MOT guys had "fixed" it, then bought two beefed up scrapyard struts the next day for 45 quid and had it going safely by the weekend

Aye, them were days lad

Edited By Ady1 on 16/08/2016 14:53:30

[Ketan SwaliParticipant @ketanswali79440]

Posted by Muzzer on 16/08/2016 14:08:46:

God, the Metro was embarassing crap. Almost as bad as the Princess, Ambassador, Allaggro, MontyNoGo, MGF etc etc.

As a young kid growing up in Mumbai, I will close my ears to anything bad being said about the Ambassdor, for twelve good reasons.

Ketan at ARC.

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

Murray, I think you must be a Sun reader, many talented forward thinking engineers worked for the Austin Rover organisation it in its many forms. The electro coat primer system was developed at Cowley and is still used today by all major car companies, they were one of the first car companies to install CAD, the tool room invested in Numerical Controlled machines in the very early days when companies like EMI, Ferranti, Cramic were players, a Cinncinnatti Hydrotel Mill had a Cinncinnatti Acramatic series 1 control fitted to it. A private micro link was able to video conference in 1970. Ideas in spot welding technology from the 1970s have only recently become mainstream. Vision systems were used in the mid 80s to establish the position of a body and send offset data to robots so they could adjust their task program. The biggest handicap to the British car industry has been investment. The people you slagged off played a significant role in the startup of the Washington Nissan plant, many engineers from ARG left and worked for independent design offices working for manufactures from all over the world. Jaguar and Landrover are now making great products with the investment to make it work. Cowley has made the MINI for the last 16 years and this has been an astonishing success. The products you mentioned as being crap compared quite well to the competition of the time. The lack of continuous investment meant that many models were well past their sell by date, a 17 year life for the Metro is ridiculous. Quality is more about getting the engineering right and then having processes that keep deviation under control, the Japanese embraced all the systems that make a quality product many years ago and the Americans and Europeans were reluctant and slow to adopt. All Uk manufactured cars had problems with early death through rust but the early Hondas and Datsuns took it to another level but at least the free radio kept working.

Mike

Retiring next week after 44 years in the British car industry.

[Ketan SwaliParticipant @ketanswali79440]

Congratulations and happy retirement Mike.

Ketan at ARC.

[MikeParticipant @mike89748]

I know it's an overdone sentiment, but you will wonder how you ever found time to go to work! Enjoy it – it's highly recommended.

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

Thank you gentlemen, I am looking forward to it.

Mike

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Ketan Swali on 16/08/2016 15:10:57:

As a young kid growing up in Mumbai, I will close my ears to anything bad being said about the Ambassdor, for twelve good reasons.

Ketan at ARC.

.

Great link, Ketan

Thanks

MichaelG.

.

P.S. [a little too late, I see]

… I think it was probably this version that Muzzer had in mind. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Ambassador

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 16/08/2016 16:37:18

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 16/08/2016 16:38:35

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Posted by Ketan Swali on 16/08/2016 15:10:57:

Posted by Muzzer on 16/08/2016 14:08:46:

God, the Metro was embarassing crap. Almost as bad as the Princess, Ambassador, Allaggro, MontyNoGo, MGF etc etc.

As a young kid growing up in Mumbai, I will close my ears to anything bad being said about the Ambassdor, for twelve good reasons.

Ketan at ARC.

Sorry, my mistake, should have mentioned the vintage I was referring to. There was a final version of the 1980s Austin Princess (itself truly hideous) that was called the Embassador. For the truly discerning owner!

[Ketan SwaliParticipant @ketanswali79440]

Oh I see, thank you for the clarification guys.

Ketan at ARC.

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Posted by Michael Poole on 16/08/2016 15:34:33:

Quality is more about getting the engineering right and then having processes that keep deviation under control, the Japanese embraced all the systems that make a quality product many years ago and the Americans and Europeans were reluctant and slow to adopt.

You make my point very well. If you got into the quality revolution that passed so much of the British car industry by, (Deming, Juran, Ishikawa etc etc), you would have noticed that much of it simply never computed with those old industries. Between the late 70s and the mid 90s, I worked on most brands of used car on the UK roads (rebuilding engines and gearboxes, modifying cylinder heads etc) and got a feel for how they were designed and built. Austin Rover (and most French and Italian) vehicles were a mess compared to the elegant and thoughtful products from Japan. Conversely, the spares for the likes of Austin Rover etc were cheap – but they had to be, as they were needed in such volumes. And yet they were a pig to change. Ironically, the Japanese engines were easier to assemble and dismantle yet ironically they needed much less of that.

I'm very glad to see the likes of JLR thriving finally after all these years. However, much of that is due to the cross pollination from the likes of Ford (directly) and the Japanese transplants (indirectly, through shared suppliers and processes). They still lag in terms of reliability, as measured objectively by the likes of JD Power, Which? etc. I'd love a modern JLR vehicle but reliability is still lacking.

The vehicles I referred to were simply a national embarrassment. Surely you can't argue with that. I've worked with many ex-Rover engineers, so I appreciate it was not their personal choice but the quality culture in the likes of Austin Rover was miles (decades) away from what you found in equivalent Japanese companies for instance, both in terms of the production and design itself. I speak from many years working in the automotive industry myself.

Having worked with Toyota, Hyundai and the "also rans", I have a pretty good idea how the quality differences come about – their validation testing is an order of magnitude more severe (literally). I'm now getting my comeuppance, working mainly with Chinese engineers.

Murray

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

ARG took massive strides forward in the 1980s, unfortunately we were chasing a moving target. Everyone knows how the Japanese amazing quality and reliability were achieved but implementing the processes is not easy and requires massive and continuous effort. I worked on the equipment that made the Rover 800 and the Honda Legend, later the Rover 600 was integrated into the same line. Much of the line was built by Honda Engineering who are a truly impressive organisation to work with. Following the Honda process of building batches of 30 it was noticeable how much better the build went when doing R600 (which was a thinly disguised Honda Accord). The R600 pressings which were made on the same presses as R800 fitted superbly which is one of the thing you must start with in a highly automated manufacturing facility. For Sams info we could change a complete press line in 20 mins, that is all dies and inter press automation ( these were conventional presses not triaxis type which can change in single digit minutes). Unfortunately if a pressing is unsatisfactory it is a lot of work to correct it and it did not always happen which means you will live with a problem. One of Hondas bike engine tests according to folklore is that they ran them on a test rig at full power for 24hrs, a brutal test of any engine but if it can take that it should survive normal abuse and apart from a C50 which only blew up because I let the oil run low I have not blown up a Honda despite plenty of hard use. When you look at the cars from ARG they were all the result of compromise, the life of the A series engine was probably only exceeded by Triumphs parallel twin, everyone knew it needed replacing but where was the money? Although the government bankrolled the Metro it was not unlimited money, they installed a facility to build 10,000 a week but 5,000 was the realistic volume. The Metro facility was installed around 1980 and had many forward thinking ideas like automatic guided vehicles, unfortunately adopting new technology early means you suffer all the problems. The vision technology I mentioned earlier cost a huge amount of money and was very complex, now a camera can check glue paths and correctly fitted components that only costs a couple of hundred quid, so robots can have eyes to check what they have done.

You may feel I am a bit sensitive to criticism of the British car industry but I know how much effort was put in by very many people to try and make it better. Ultimately we failed but I think with proper investment and management it could have been different.

Hats off to our Olympic sportsmen and women for their outstanding results, but apart from their own Herculean efforts the big factor is that they have been properly funded to allow them to be successful and so it could have been for our car industry.

Mike

[Anonymous]

Posted by Muzzer on 16/08/2016 16:37:01:

There was a final version of the 1980s Austin Princess (itself truly hideous) that was called the Embassador. For the truly discerning owner!

I must have been exceptionally discerning, as I owned a Princess followed by an Ambassador.

Andrew

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

The problem with a lot of the British motor industry was the quality, because of poor management and labour relations.

The Montego was basically good, but overgeared for caravan towing. I saw the Perkins Prima Diesel engine into production. The validation and reliability testing was the same as used for the Agricultural, Industrial and Construction engines, for heavy duty work. They withstood deliberate abuse very well, I never managed to break one!. We had cars brought to the factory, still going strong after 300, 000 miles of taxi work. The same engine from a Fork Lift Truck was still within new manufacturing tolerances after 7,000 hours, (And FLT operators are not particularly careful of their machines. You should see how they treat the trucks in the Brickyards!)

Sadly, the Engineering skills that made Britain great are diminishing, (Preservationists and Model Engineers are trying to keep them alive), but it is easier to work at getting R S I than to make anything.

Don't knock the few British engineers that are left, be proud of them! . If you fly, in an air liner, it is more than likely that you travelled courtesy of Rolls Royce, and the results of their innovations and skills! Their research produced sealants such as Wellseal and Hylomar; and now they grow turbine blades from single crystals!

They solved problems that beset the first B R railcars, ( I saw it from fairly close quarters!)

The largest yield tightening machine in the world, at the time, (32 spindles) and probably even now, was adopted by a British company. (Ford and Rover were using single spindle versions, but this one was awesome). It would put W range fasteners, 32 of them, into yield, with a 9 ton load, from finger tight . within seven seconds It ended gasket failures, and paid for itself in a year

It is just so sad that so many British managers failed to adopt of the systems proposed by of Deeming and his like, whilst the Japanese did.

Howard

[Sam Longley 1Participant @samlongley1]

 

Posted by Howard Lewis on 17/08/2016 22:39:40

They withstood deliberate abuse very well, I never managed to break one!. We had cars brought to the factory, still going strong after 300, 000 miles of taxi work. The same engine from a Fork Lift Truck was still within new manufacturing tolerances after 7,000 hours, It is just so sad that so many British managers failed to adopt of the systems proposed by of Deeming and his like, whilst the Japanese did.

Howard

There is a saying used by structural engineers–" any fool can design a bridge to stay up but ot takes a structural engineer to design one that will just stay up"

The point being that whilst those engine may have lasted , being built like a b s h ( to coin a forumite's phrase) , probably with wide or slack tollerances, is not engineering. Light, tight, consistent( consistent being the operative word i think) & cheep with good quality design beats the above every time as proven over the years. So whilst our enginers were busy slapping themselves over there backs basking in glory they were being gradually overtaken & refusing to accept the fact.

You still see the attitudes in peoples minds even in this forum with comments about good engineers being on the scrap heap. The harsh reality is that They are on the scrap heap because they are no longer good engineers for the modern world & bemoaning the past is unfortunately not going to help

In my own industry i see that i have been left behind but i am fortunate that at 69 yrs i get asked to work every winter for the old skills that i have & get paid well for them. But each year i wonder if they will be wanted any more as i see things changing. I do not ( because of my upbringing) like the changes but in reality, they work ( they have to because of the idiots we now have!!!!! ) i am the only one in 400 that gets called back so it says a lot for change,. One has to accept that —–but if i was 50 then i would be pushing to update & not accept the situation as we should have done years ago

 

Edited By Sam Longley 1 on 18/08/2016 09:15:11

[Dave HalfordParticipant @davehalford22513]

Bit of balance needed.

Anyone remember Datsun as was? The one that rusted so badly the engine and box could fall out as you drove it . Rebrand as Nissan and a coat of paint worked wonders

Or Lancia still not sold in this country after getting the appalling reputation that resulted in a buy back scheme.

Or Japanese bikes, great electrics with dire tyres and a shiny disc brake that never rusted but very unhappy when wet.

And yes everything comes down to money

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Posted by Howard Lewis on 17/08/2016 22:39:40:

It is just so sad that so many British managers failed to adopt of the systems proposed by of Deeming and his like, whilst the Japanese did.

It's one of my regrets that I never met the guy. I was a member of the British Deming Society in the early 1990s and was down to attend a meeting in London when the great man would be there himself. Unfortunately he died in Dec 1993 just a month or so beforehand. I'm not into hero figures but given a lot of the awful design and manufacturing philosophy and practice I saw in the UK at the time, his was a reassuring voice of sense and reason.

There is an excellent book about the Honda Car Co that I found when it was published in 1993. "Honda's Global Local Corporation" is a fascinating insight into many aspects of the company's operations back then, particularly the Rover partnership. Being thoroughly researched and written by a UK academic, the book is based on real data, rather than anecdotes and folk tales. My resolve not to work for Rover who were recruiting at the time was only strengthened by what he reported.

Another interesting book is The Honda Book of Management which is still being revised and published. They are an unusual company, not least by Japanese standards.They have a record of deliberately destabilising and reorganising their company structure during good times so that they are fit and nimble and can react rapidly when challenges arise. Times of change are then opportunities to thrive when the opposition are struggling with not only the new challenges but also the historical problems of apathy, rigid systems and outdated practices. Before you ask, during the 90s, the only jobs on offer at Honda UK were in production engineering.

Murray

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