Question

Think about the highly publicized safety problems at General Motors (GM). One observer said that a goal of efficiency had taken precedence over a goal of quality within this company. Do you think managers can improve both efficiency and effectiveness simultaneously? Discuss. How do you think GM’s leaders should respond to the safety situation?

Answer 1

Answer:

General Motors recalled 800,000 cars, as there was a problem in the ignition switch of a car and that was the biggest recall. Even the company had to pay $900million fine and promised the federal monitoring to work on safety measures and improving it too. If the observer is saying they have compromised with the quality so indeed Yes, General Motors have done a blunder in safety issues with respect to customer intimacy. The faulty ignition switches problem was they could shut the moving car and prevent airbags from inflating. This is true there is a big competitive pressure in the automobile industry but to retain in the market the company should use Benchmark, but making such faulty and quality damaging blunders it ruins the image and goodwill of the brand. When we manufacture more, the quality of the product should not suffer as there are so many options for switching or for comparing.

The management has agreed to the authorities to manage their faults and to improve measures on safety in their product. There are many ways they can make changes to avoid and overcome these issues like the first move is the recall of a huge number of cars for correction and second is a culture change in their company. They appointed a global vehicle safety position to report to top General Motors leaders. The cars are checked properly before being during technical, manufacturing and selling time. A proper investigation team is appointed, employers dealers and suppliers are being trained and encouraged for submitting safety concerns.

The GM leaders are working on this problem and dealing it with some better ideas and even the improvement can be seen as very few recalls are being noted by general motors in 2019 over 4.9 million cars. and U.S vehicle dependability study ranked Chevrolet fourth rank.