Mitsubishi Motors Corp. (Tokyo) has lengthened total vehicle development time by 10 months to improve quality. Going from 30 to 40 months from the start of development to the sale of a car allows for greater focus on developing product proposals and concept cars and for fixing the styling of a car earlier in the process.
"In the old days we found that quality problems arose because there were a lot of changes in the very late stages," observes Marcus Schwill, general manager of Mitsubishi's quality management system. To combat the problem, management is now involved in checking development earlier in the process.