Japanese Metal Manufacturer Faked Specifications To Hundreds of Companies (jalopnik.com)

schwit1 writes: Kobe Steel, a major Japanese supplier of steel and other metals worldwide, has admitted that it faked the specifications to metals shipped to hundreds of companies over the past decade.

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.

Comments

Were Tesla and SpaceX customers?

[Narcocide]

This could explain some conspicuous quality control issues in the materials, if so. There could be a huge lawsuit in the works here.

So, the first question...

[EndlessNameless]

How long until there is a documentable claim that this behavior killed somebody?

Next question that comes to mind: How long until I find out if my car was built with substandard materials?

Materials Testing

[albeit unknown]

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.

Re:A lesson...

[mellon]

Actually, I think the lesson here is that when you source material, you need to actually test to see if it meets the specifications. You should never assume that the seller is telling the truth.

Re: A lesson...

[SuperKendall]

How is it "unrealistic" to expect a steel company to correctly produce steel and accurately describe its properties? Other steel companies seem to manage this without issue.

But as another responder stated, if you are a company you basically cannot trust ANYTHING outsourced these days, and must constantly monitor it for quality. Which begs the question, why outsource then if you must also incur the added cost of verification and riding herd on QA...

Re:Perhaps insensitive, but

[fahrbot-bot]

Seppuku time?

They tried, but the knives were made of Kobe Steel ...

Where's the beef?

[WaffleMonster]

I've been hearing about Kobe on English language broadcasts for a while. One constant throughout is a complete lack of contextual information.

We all know they "Falsified data" on strength and durability of aluminum and copper... what does this mean in real terms?. Did they just check the "A-OK" box and fill in fake data without bothering to run the tests? Did they run the tests and then knowingly alter results? What is the difference between what they reported and actual conditions of materials sold? What is the risk? I would be most interested in any references that address these basic questions.

So far every downstream manufacturer who has looked into this has not been able to find anything wrong or at least they are not admitting it publically.