I believe that most manufacturers have mistakenly focused on initial quality and reducing cost and cycle time during the production and delivery cycle. This has come at the expense of reliability.

Customers buy for the following reasons, listed by top priority:
• Features
• Cost
• Availability
• Quality

Customers come back based on:
• Reliability
• Function
• Cost
• Availability

A customer puts quality last when making a purchase because quality is generally good no matter who the supplier is. In the same plant, the same people make Toyota and General Motors cars. Quality isn’t the problem; yes, there are “lemons” out there, but the top half-dozen name brands do a good job of producing initial quality. Why, then, have Ford and GM given way to Toyota as the No. 1 producer? Because Toyota is the best at producing reliability.

Let me give you some examples. The Toyota Yaris hatchback has 81-percent fewer problems during the first five years of ownership than the average car, while the Pontiac Solstice has 234-percent more problems than the average car.

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