Ford had a problem. On a small number of vehicles, the powertrain hardware and software malfunctioned. This mysterious issue cropped up in limited situations, couldn’t be replicated in the testing site after a car was broken down and put back together, and warranty costs were rising.
Larry R. Smith, now retired from Ford and a consultant at The Quality Smith (Dearborn, MI), recalls the strategy that solved the problem. The team decided to consider how they could get the system to exhibit this problem and found seven different scenarios. But only one matched the conditions cited by customers. It turned out that road conditions affected the instrumentation on the vehicle. A specific set of conditions—involving the road, the vehicle and speed—affected the software and caused problems on the vehicle.