[Wildcat]

I came across this an hour or so ago. I know Honda's quality has been slipping, and I was hopeful someone at Honda also noticed. Indeed they have, and it's all the way at the top. Short version: Honda considers themselves in a quality crisis, and chief executive Hachigo has announced that he is moving the independent R&D teams in-house and cutting some executive positions in order to centralize decision making.

But after a slew of recalls since 2014 for problems with components such as airbags, sliding doors and engines, Honda’s status as a benchmark for quality and efficiency has been seriously damaged - and the quality crisis is hitting profits.

According to five Honda insiders, quality blunders have helped squeeze the operating margin at its global automotive business to 2%-3% - giving it less room for maneuver just as bigger rivals are building partnerships and overhauling their operations to become stronger.

That’s in stark contrast to Honda’s motorcycle business which has already brought its R&D division in-house and has a margin of 13.9%.

In J.D. Power’s study of vehicle dependability in the United States, one of Honda’s two main auto markets along with China, the Japanese brand fell to 18th place this year from 5th in 2015 and 4th in 2002, its highest ranking.

“These moves we’re making today will decide our eventual fate: whether we’re going to be in business as an independent player 10 to 15 years from now,” a Honda source told Reuters.

The article is a good read since Hachigo has clearly defined goals and plans to bring quality back up, including cutting the number of model options drastically. They have too many global models, too many options in each model (example--the US Accord has 10 different model options, including three hybrid models), and because of the complexity of catering to different markets with different products, engineering quality has slipped due to having so many designs out there.

Two company sources said Hachigo plans to eliminate the top management roles at Honda R&D and will probably turn some into divisional managers within Honda Motor.

One source said the aim was: “to centralize the company’s fragmented, localized decision-making power back at the mothership in Tokyo.”

According to the engineer, Honda has also introduced an internal quality target to cut global recalls by two-thirds in the next few years from a crisis level of 6 million in 2017.

Honda's Hachigo seizes the wheel as quality crisis hits profits

At a two-day gathering for Honda's suppliers in March, Chief Executive Takahiro Hachigo sounded the alarm.

www.reuters.com

 

[Dimitrij]

Didn't Toyota have the same problem a while ago - too many models in too many markets with too many options, too quickly?

I think Honda folks are on the right track.

 

[Wildcat]

I think Honda folks are on the right track.

I believe so as well. I won't own a current Honda, but in a decade or so I'm hoping reliability will be back to where it was when I first started owning Hondas. I started in 1988 with the then-new Accord Coupe, owned a '92 Civic and then the '97 CR-V, and they all ran for a long time without needing repairs (beyond wear and maintenance).

The two '09s have had more failures on them than I'm accustomed to. I feel as though quality started to dip around the 2000 model year. The kiddo's old Accord V6 had the awful B7XA transmission, which was not as bad as the then-new 5-speed automatic transmission in the 2000-2003 Acura TL where owners would sometimes have more than one replaced under warranty.

I partly blame the newer technology and features for some of the failures--thanks to government standards and marketing (keeping up with the competition), vehicles are way more complex now than they used to be. But given how many problems there are with the current generation of CR-V and other current Honda/Acura products, I won't even look at them anymore. I get an idea to look at a Pilot, and see a string of problems (especially with that trash ZF transmission); check the HR-V and again, more problems. The current Accord seems to be better off, as does the Insight, but I need a larger/taller vehicle these days.

No auto manufacturer is perfect, but Hyundai/Kia have kicked quality way up, and a few of their newer models are very appealing. The Toyotas I'm looking at are near the end of their generation (4Runner or Tacoma) and are fairly reliable. A couple of Subaru models have improved in quality also, and they seem to be sorting the CVT issues in recent models. Plenty of choices for when we replace these CR-Vs in the not too distant future. Maybe by the late 2020s, new Honda models will get their quality back where they need to be.