re: #327 Guanxi88

See, that’s quality, my friend. Folk can go on and on all day long about Six Sigma this, or TQM that, but the bottom line, at least for industrial production, is - does the damned thing work, and for how long?

They built better than they needed to, because that was as badly as they could build them at the time.

I worked vacations at the MB plant in Sindelfingen when I was a student in Germany. Thanks to union thuggery I always made enough - real union rates! - to pay my way through the next semester. While the thugs were off sunning themselves for six weeks’ paid vacation (damn their working-class greed!), I was pulling in real money.

One time I was assigned to the returns department, where all the parts from the dealers that they couldn’t sell got sent to go back in the parts cycle. So one morning my shift boss told me to go pick up a front bumper for an older-model diesel car and move it somewhere else.

I nearly got a hernia. Thing was made of solid brass, chromed. The fellas laughed their asses off while I tried to balance it on my shoulder and not tip over.