Ford Pinto by Reflection

Quality Management
System Failure of all
time: Ford Pinto
Prepared By: Reflection

Md.Mostakim Sobhan Raihan
Id no.091406

Company History of Ford Pinto
In the 1970s, the Ford
Pinto is most well-known
and the worst disaster
Ford Motor Company
is an American
automaker and the
world’s 5th largest
automaker
Henry Ford started
the Ford Motor
Company,

Continued....
• Ford launched PINTO in
1971 to compete with
German and Japanese
compact cars
• PINTO was introduced
by President Lee
Iacocca succeeding an
internal struggle

Safety doesn’t sell?
There was a corporate belief, attributed to Lee
Iacocca himself, which stated "safety doesn't sell.”
“This became a corporate belief what we can see where it led the
Ford motor company, i.e. towards a hasty design of Ford Pinto
which eventually came out as being hugely defected”.
5

Counterparts
Volkswagen Beetle
Ford Pinto
6

Chevrolet Vega
AMC Gremlin
Continued..

• We Go Further at Ford to
meet the needs of our
customers, the challenges
of our industry and the
issues confronting our
world.
Vision
• Go FurtherMission
Vision and Mission

Quality Failure
Quality is ensured by Quality
Management System.
Customers might be upset
Management and employees
both might be unhappy

Sustaining Quality: Underlying Causes for Failure
Lack of leadership for quality
Lack of planning for quality
Inadequate resources for quality
Inadequate human resources development and
management
Lack of customer focus

Quality Failure of Ford Pinto
Causes of Ford Pinto top list of Quality failure :
•Design flaws
•Questionable ethics decisions by top management
resulting in dangerous vehicle
•Many were considered ugly
•40-50,000 miles was not unusual for major breakdowns

The Pinto Fire Controversy
As early as 1972, there
reports of explosions
in low-speed
collisions involving
Pintos.
Accident
investigations
revealed reports of
trauma injuries and
deaths.
Results were; 11
crashes, 8 gas tanks
ruptured, burst into
flames.
Ford had first
conducted rear-end
collision tests on the
Pinto in December
1970, months after it
was already in
production.

Filler neck
breaking off and
allowing fuel to
pour out
Tank being penetrated
by contact with
differential mounting
bolts and right shock
absorber.
Continued…..
Engineers found that the majority of the ruptures were caused
by two factors:

Gas Tank Configurations
• Behind Rear-Axle
• Over-the-Axle Tank

Behind Rear-Axle Tank
Pros:
 More Luggage space
 Industry standard – felt it was safer
Cons:
 Not as safe in rear-end collisions
Continued….

Continued….
Over-the-axle-tank
Pro: Performed well in rear-end collisions
Cons:
Long “round-about” filler pipe
Closer to passengers in back seat
Higher center of gravity
Reduced trunk space

Khan Rashel Rahman
Id. No 105034

The design of Pinto was questionable. The design
problems first came into public attention in August,1977
in an article of “Mother Jones Magazine”. This article
condemned the Ford Motor Company and the author was
later given a “Pulitzer Prize”
Questionable design

Other Causes of Quality Failure
Fighting strong
competition
from Volkswagen
Assembly-line
machinery was
already tooled.
Ford successfully
lobbied, with
extraordinary vigor and
some blatant lies, against
a key government safety
standard.

Fixing the explosion problem
Use of a rubber
bladder/liner
• Most effective
• Exterior of the
tank was
ruptured
• Unit cost of
bladders
would have
amounted to
$5.08 per car.
Attaching extra
steel plate
• An extra steel
plate attached
to the rear of
the car just
behind the
bumper.
• Successfully
warded off a
blow at 30
mph.
• Could have
cost up to $11
per car to
install.
Simple Plastic
Insulator
• Simple plastic
insulator kept
the bolts from
ever making
contact with
the fuel tank.
• Cost of this
item was less
than $1.

Compensation
A serious burn injury was worth about $67,000.
Experts calculated the value of a human life at around
$200,000
In 1978, three girls died in a Pinto collision fire.
It was a real wake-up call for Ford
The driver of the car had died from her injuries a few
days after the accident.
California jury awarded a boy who had been severely
burned and disfigured a total of $126 million.

Nabiha Binte Manjur
id no104904

Continued…..
Knew Pinto was a firetrap, yet paid
out millions to settle damage suits.
Ford has crash-tested Pinto more
than 40 times at over 25 mph and
all of them resulted in ruptured tank.
Waited eight years because cost
benefit analysis showed changes
were not profitable.
Ford marketing team dropped the
line “Pinto leaves you with that warm
feeling “.

Reports conclusively reveal that if anyone ran into Pinto at over 30 miles
per hour,
Continued…..
Rear end of the car would
buckle right up to the back
seat.
Spark from a cigarette, ignition,
or scraping metal, and both cars
would be engulfed in flames.
Tube would be ripped away
and gas would slosh onto the
road.
Buckled gas tank would be
jammed up.

Pinto Green Book
Ford executive F.G. Olsen published Pinto Green Book by the Society of Automotive
Engineers. He listed these product objectives as follows:
• Size
• Weight
True
Subcompact
• Initial price
• Fuel consumption
• Reliability
• Serviceability
Low Cost of
Ownership
•Appearance
•Comfort
•Features
•Ride and handling
•Performance
Clear Product
Superiority

Risk-Benefit Analysis
Burn Deaths Burn Injuries Burn Vehicles
Savings 180 180 2100
Unit-costs $200000 $67000 $700
Sub-Totals $36000000 $12060000 $1470000
Total Cost $49 Million
Figure : Benefit

Continued…..
Car Sales Light Truck Sales
Sales 11000000 15000000
Unit Costs $11 $11
Sub-totals $121000000 $16500000
Total Cost $137 Million
Figure : Risks

 Evidence indicated that cost of making
improvements to gas tank could have been as low
as $5.08 per vehicle.
 If the costs were around $5.08 per vehicle, the
Ford motor company would not have had as strong
a risk/benefit argument as with the $11 figure
provided.
39
Ethical issues

Ethical issues
 Ford made decision not to make improvements to the
gas tank after completion of the risk/benefit analysis.
 Ford did not make adjustments to the Pinto design
because the $11 cost was too high
 Ford did not consider the lives which would be saved
if the adjustment was made.
40

 The company chose not to implement the
design, which would have cost $11 per car
(according to Ford) even though it had done an
analysis showing that the new design would
result in 180 less deaths.
 The company defended itself by saying that it
used the accepted risk/benefit analysis to
determine if the monetary costs of making the
change were greater than the societal benefit.
RISK BENEFIT ANALYSIS VS ETHICS
42

• Based on the numbers Ford used, the cost would have
been $137 million versus the $49.5 million price tag put
on the deaths, injuries, and car damages, and thus Ford
felt justified not implementing the design change.
• It is unethical to determine that people should be
allowed to die or be seriously injured because it would
cost too much to prevent it .
Continued….
Some things just can't be measured in terms of dollars,
and that includes human life.

Abu Bakker khokon
Id no.091267

The Ford Pinto Myth
Constantly
brought up
as an
example of
poor
business
ethics
Use of
emotional
terms such
as
"firetrap",
"death
trap", and
"lethal car"
Document
s were
used to
show
Ford's lack
of concern
for safety.
Case was
blown out of
proportion
by media

Recommendations
Effective design
reviews
Design and
process FEMAs
Measurement-
based corrective
action (including
customer
satisfaction)

Conclusion
Cheap subcompact car
released in 1970 under the
tagline “the little carefree
car”.
Time frame for getting
Pinto from conception to
production was 25 months.
Tried to get market share
faster than others.

Ford Pinto by Reflection

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