Originally Posted by
7milesout
Sorry Mark - I'm not the best at being clear. I'm not condemning Korean tire companies. Or Korean vendors in general. To clarify, I never have bought a Hyundai-Kia vehicle after seeing a) the absolute joke of an engineering job they do as compared to Toyota (worked in design for both), and b) the absolute ridiculous antics they pulled at the Hyundai plant. They were laughable after having joined them immediately subsequent to working for Toyota. Toyota is legit.
And to be clear, I'm not condemning Korean tire companies, I was just left with with a very bad impression of Hyundai-Kia, and every vendor I worked with. Which was interior and exterior trim companies. In one instance, having a meeting with a console company I asked them to make a mod to the part, and let's reconvene in 2 hours (something like that). They looked at me like I was crazy and replied with, "it would require a tooling change, we can't do that in 2 hours." I said, "no, I'm talking about making a hand modification to the part, use pliers, razors, super glue whatever and drill a new hole, blah blah blah." They said, oh, that would take at least a week, we can't do that. I said, "Here, give me your console and meet me back here in 2 hours, I'll do it myself." And I did. I told them it didn't have to be pretty, it was a functional check to see if what I was proposing would fix the problem. They came back, there was a whole pack of them, and they acted like I was some kind of super-human. It was ridiculous. And it did fix the problem, and an engineering change was made to duplicate my hand change. But that's what Japanese and American engineers do on a daily basis. As well as the Japanese vendors. It ain't no thang.
But they acted like it was death defying and were all smiley-faced and amazed. I was mortified about the level of engineering I was working with. And that's just once instance. Let me just say that lying about the cause of a problem, and lying about what's going on in the plant seems to be acceptable. Lying to U.S. Customs and Regulatory Affairs type staff is a fun and exciting game, as long as you have an American that's going to be the one to fire if the Koreans get caught.
Outside of doing "engineering" work, they are an amazing people, and I would be honored to live among them. And I mean that. They are great great respectable loving people (Japanese too).