[voyager]

Emails Show Auto Maker Placed Urgent Order for 500,000 Replacement Switches in December 2013

http://online.wsj.com/articles/gm-ordered-new-switches-long-before-recall-1415584224

 

[patrickbec]

Doesn't sound like GM made a purchase, only that they were seeking a proposal on how (timing, cost, schedule) Delphi could deliver the replacement parts. Management would need to know that as part of their decision making. A purchase would require a Purchase order and an entry into the purchase system, if Delphi was to get paid, unless GM has an informal procurement system,which is very unlikely for a company that purchases so much.

 

[Ed753]

Doesn't sound like GM made a purchase, only that they were seeking a proposal on how (timing, cost, schedule) Delphi could deliver the replacement parts. Management would need to know that as part of their decision making. A purchase would require a Purchase order and an entry into the purchase system, if Delphi was to get paid, unless GM has an informal procurement system,which is very unlikely for a company that purchases so much.

In December, about an issue they didn't know about until the end of January.......

Some low-level person in purchasing doesn't just decide in vacuum to buy or even quote a 1/2 million switches for 10 year old out of production cars.......


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[rand49er]

In December, about an issue they didn't know about until the end of January.......

Some low-level person in purchasing doesn't just decide in vacuum to buy or even quote a 1/2 million switches for 10 year old out of production cars.......


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A good employee doesn't necessarily wait for the boss to ask him/her to get information; they arm themselves with answers ahead of time. Don't know it actually happened that way, but it certainly could have.

 

[Ed753]

A good employee doesn't necessarily wait for the boss to ask him/her to get information; they arm themselves with answers ahead of time. Don't know it actually happened that way, but it certainly could have.

You are reaching, if I worked on everything I thought my boss might want me to do, instead of the things I've already been assigned or responsible for, at the end of the week, I'd have got nothing done, because I worked on all the wrong stuff, that isn’t a good employee.

But again, this was in December (2013), about a problem that didn't exist until the end of January (2014), if GM was doing said activities as the article states in December, discussions would have been taking place in November, maybe earlier.

 

[rand49er]

You are reaching ...

Maybe. Depends on how serious the conversations were at the time. Yes, maybe I'm reaching. Maybe.

 

[Dr.Show-Me]

Let's just call GM the Devil and be done with it!

 

[Ed753]

Let's just call GM the Devil and be done with it!

Right, because we haven’t actually saw the +10 year long paper (e-mail) trail, with finger-prints, injuries, blood and only pictures of the mangled cars, we don't really know for sure that any of this happened.


This story doesn't reveal the cover-up, we've known about that, and even GM acknowledges that; this only calls into question the last few months of the time-line, before the "discovery" was acknowledged by GM executives.

 

[Oldsmobile stopped]

Emails Show Auto Maker Placed Urgent Order for 500,000 Replacement Switches in December 2013

http://online.wsj.com/articles/gm-ordered-new-switches-long-before-recall-1415584224

I always wondered how many accidents were caused by to many keys on keyring, which GM did issue safety warnings on having to many keys on your keyring?

Always have used just the ignition key only with no other keys attached, all my keys for everything else are on a separate key chain. I hope GM include that warning in all the current handbooks, it just seems common sense.

Maybe keyless ignition switches should be the future, Apple use fingerprint recognition with pass codes as back-up maybe this should be the way forwards, and save a little bit of weight on an ignition key, design the problem out of the starting process, they don't do/have sets of ignition keys for a Boeing 747 or Airbus A380, it's about cars went to keyless ignition the same way..

 

[ih8slowcars]

This just provides more evidence that GM Management was aware of the problem and lying all the time.

 

[Sox]

Doesn't sound like GM made a purchase, only that they were seeking a proposal on how (timing, cost, schedule) Delphi could deliver the replacement parts. Management would need to know that as part of their decision making. A purchase would require a Purchase order and an entry into the purchase system, if Delphi was to get paid, unless GM has an informal procurement system,which is very unlikely for a company that purchases so much.

They were not just seeking a proposal for a half million switches for a defunct model, a year after ordering only 11,000 switches. They were very specific that an aggressive schedule had to be adopted for an "Urgent Field Action." Are you seriously thinking someone just sends something like this to a supplier on a hunch? Really? Just to make the boss look good?

Believing this was just an exploratory memo is as silly as thinking that the whole debacle was the fault of just two very low level engineers. And we know how that turned out, don't we?

You are either very naïve, or you just stepped out of a meeting at the RenCen. Go back to your meeting.

More shoes will drop later on in the form of incriminating emails. This is going to get even uglier. Yes executives will not get off scot free, despite strenuous attempts to "punish the innocent and promote the guilty."

 

[Quixote88]

I cannot see the entire article, but does this make Coke-Can Dan look even worse to those who thought he bailed out to let the next CEO, Mary Barra, take the heat?

We know that Akerson was not part of GM during the entire problem, which stems back 6 or so years prior to him being involved with GM. We also know that there was a conspiracy to keep things hush-hush regarding the ignition switches going back to Rick Wagoner and through Fritz Henderson and Ed Whitacre's regimes. Some have stated that Ms. Barra knew about this problem years back and helped cover it up, and she's now getting her comeuppance as the embattled CEO of GM.

I honestly don't know if the part about Ms. Barra is true or not.

But what I do know is that time after time, the cover up of a problem often tends to be far worse than the honest fix of a problem. Had GM simply acknowledged this problem back in the '04-'05 range and fixed it, they would've taken some heat, but nothing like the bad press they've suffered because of it... Not to mention, 30+/- people may still be alive today...

 

[patrickbec]

In December, about an issue they didn't know about until the end of January.......

Some low-level person in purchasing doesn't just decide in vacuum to buy or even quote a 1/2 million switches for 10 year old out of production cars.......


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They did know about it, a meeting held been held on the issue a day before, but no decision had been made per the WSJ chronology:

Dec. 17: GM says a committee including engineering vice-president discusses a small-car ignition-switch recall but takes no action. No records of meeting disclosed.
Dec. 18: Delphi records show a GM contractor orders 500,000 switch parts; Delphi later is told parts were needed to fix more than 700,000 GM vehicles.
Late December: GM says CEO-elect Mary Barra is told by engineering vice-president a recall is being considered but more analysis is needed.
Jan. 31: GM committee completes its analysis and recommends a recall. CEO is notified that day.
Feb. 7: GM informs auto-safety regulator of ignition-switch recall covering 780,000 vehicles.

Obviously someone from that meeting saw the need to start planning a huge and aggressive replacement program, and took the action, with high level approval obviously, to seek a supply plan. I didn't see the e-mail in the story this morning before I made my comment, but seeing it now indicates that this e-mail is indeed a request for a supply plan, but the reference to a manual add to the system does mudddle the waters, even so it seems to me likely to be just an indication of the manner the order (if it eventuated) would be captured due to the urgency. From my experience in procurement, I would never call this an order. That being said, GM needs to explain this asap, as it has no goodwill on this issue and no one trusts it, as the other comments on here indicate.

 

[mchicha]

Seems to me there is no wrongdoing and internal action escalated matters as they got information on the situation and this report is sensationalism at its best.

 

[Johnny_Buchanan]

Dunno, to me the timelines and actions outlined by Patrickbec earlier seem like fairly reasonable for a big corporation:

Dec. 17: GM says a committee including engineering vice-president discusses a small-car ignition-switch recall but takes no action. No records of meeting disclosed.
Dec. 18: Delphi records show a GM contractor orders 500,000 switch parts; Delphi later is told parts were needed to fix more than 700,000 GM vehicles.
Late December: GM says CEO-elect Mary Barra is told by engineering vice-president a recall is being considered but more analysis is needed.
Jan. 31: GM committee completes its analysis and recommends a recall. CEO is notified that day.
Feb. 7: GM informs auto-safety regulator of ignition-switch recall covering 780,000 vehicles.

-J

 

[Dr.Show-Me]

Tt

Dunno, to me the timelines and actions outlined by Patrickbec earlier seem like fairly reasonable for a big corporation:

Dec. 17: GM says a committee including engineering vice-president discusses a small-car ignition-switrecall but takes no action. No records of meeting disclosed.
Dec. 18: Delphi records show a GM contractor orders 500,000 switch parts; Delphi later is told parts were needed to fix more than 700,000 GM vehicles.
Late December: GM says CEO-elect Mary Barra is told by engineering vice-president a recall is being considered but more analysis is needed.
Jan. 31: GM committee completes its analysis and recommends a recall. CEO is notified that day.
Feb. 7: GM informs auto-safety regulator of ignition-switch recall covering 780,000 vehicles.

-J

Fairly reasonable if the cars involved were 2011-2012 models. The problem dates back to 2001 and especially when GM changed the ignition switch without changing the number. What was the date for that?

 

[TheCarGonzo]

Proof again that "neutral party investigators," aware of who is buttering their bread, are nothing of the sort...

Anton R. Valukas, a former United States attorney, delivered the report he was paid to do...

 

[carbarrister]

Nothing was going to be disclosed until the Treasury Department sold its shares in December and Akerson had been allowed to leave in January to spend time with his ailing wife. The paper trail about what Mary knew and when she knew it was carefully orchestrated.

 

[doh]

CBC's "the fifth estate" ( ab basic Watch Dog show) did a show on the "Switch from Hell" and GM did know about the problem, even before using the switch in production cars.

The detent plunger's spring misterious got 1.8mm longer in 2007. (Basically the thickness of 2 dimes.) but retained the same part number. Why?

Video and responses @ this link

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2014-2015/gm-recall-the-switch-from-hell

And if you are a Fan Boy, you may not want to watch it.

 

[gmcshorrors]

If you're "In The Market" for something, you're inquiring.
If GM had no immediate intent to purchase, why would they bother to ask about such details?