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Japanese Metal Manufacturer Faked Specifications To Hundreds of Companies (jalopnik.com)
Last week, Kobe Steel admitted that staff fudged reports on the strength and durability of products requested by its clients -- including those from the airline industry, cars, space rockets, and Japan's bullet trains. The company estimated that four percent of aluminum and copper products shipped from September 2016 to August 2017 were falsely labelled, Automotive News reported.
But on Friday, the company's CEO, Hiroya Kawasaki, revealed the scandal has impacted about 500 companies -- doubling the initial count -- and now includes steel products, too. The practice of falsely labeling data to meet customer's specifications could date back more than 10 years, according to the Financial Times.
For rockets the concern is less serious as they generally are not built for a long lifespan, but for airplanes and cars this news could be devastating, requiring major rebuilds on many operating vehicles.
I'm surprised this wasn't noticed earlier, if, in fact, the changes were substantial. All of the companies described in the summary have their own materials and finished component testing labs to verify strength, fatigue life, hardness, corrosion resistance, and so on. This is both to check incoming raw material and subsequent processing steps. No one in safety-critical industries trusts the word of a vendor without significant quality control agreements and auditing programs.
The Japanese car majors are reporting "no problems" with Kobe aluminum they've tested from the past three years. Japan Rail has said similar about undercarriage parts. There are more years, more metals and more manufacturers involved, but the pattern is clear; these issues will be pencil whipped. There is margin for error engineered into transportation products and no one is going to rip up the floor boards over paper work unless there is a demonstrative problem.
Right or wrong that's how it will be.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I believe the point was that during our granddads time the phrase "made in Japan" was synonymous with junk. Just like "made in China" today and "Made in the USA" was in the 70s and 80s... It wasn't until a good bit after after Japan rebuilt after WWII that "made in japan" started to become associated with anything resembling quality.
Testing is costly and sometimes difficult to do in-house, depending on the nature of the testing. But there is usually the option of a third party to perform the testing for you.
The other problem is you might get initial samples that are correct, but later shipments may be sub-standard. It's usually not economical to test every bit of material you purchase, especially if the testing is destructive. It should be possible to test randomly or test batches in order to detect discrepancies early rather than having questionable material in your supply chain for 10 years.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
How much do you destroy
A few cm^3.
Test?! All the time?! Millions of tons of steel?!? Every roll?!?
On September 15, 2014, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol issued HQ H209833, a ruling requiring Mill Test Certification documents accompany ALL bulk metal imports from foreign suppliers.
Domestically, what metal production facilities still exist in the U.S. do MTC testing on EVERY roll of high-carbon sheet steel, and EVERY run of high-carbon steel pipe routinely. And they have been doing so at least since the dawn of nuclear power in this country, because the NRC requires it for pipes used in the cooling systems of nuclear power plants both commercial and DOE-owned-and-operated.
I have a close friend who designed the first industrial-scale bar code printer for U.S. Steel Corporation back in the early 1980's, which they've used ever since to provide a certification paper trail for high-carbon structural steel products for a wide variety of applications. (Sadly, he was unable to patent it, because he was a U.S. Steel employee at the time, so his IP belonged to the company.) They do that both because for certain applications it's a requirement of federal law, and because it provides them with legal cover from liability in case of an accident that involves a product or structure that incorporates their steel.
So, yes: EVERY roll, EVERY time ...
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