The Chevy Cobalt

“The Chevy Cobalt”

After reviewing the article “Mary Barra’s (Unexpected) Opportunity” which was an article pertaining to the Chevrolet Cobalt recall I looked at the company dynamic and assumed I was the manager for General Motor’s Quality Assurance department. I believe that there was not a quality system in place for this incident at GM during or after this product failure. I will review each system and why I believe that GM was not using that system anytime during the ignition failure in their products that were on the roads. I will conclude this information and determine what I feel what was the proper quality system GM should have been using during this time period.

The first quality management approach I will review is the Strategic Quality Management. This approach is “a systematic approach for setting and meeting quality goals throughout the company.” (Juran, 1988) This quality management approach “is used with upper management participation regarding managing for quality to n unprecedented degree” (Juran, 1988). I do not believe that GM used this approach since no report was sent to high level executives alerting them to the cause of the malfunction of the Cobalt’s ignition switch once it had been concluded to be the cause of the malfunction. (Colvin, 2014).

The next quality management approach for review is the Total Quality Management. This approach is “a management approach to long-term success through customer satisfaction”. This approach is based on the active participation of all members of a corporation regarding improving the processes, products, services, and the culture in which they work. (Quality Glossary, 2002). I do not believe that GM used this quality management approach as all members of the organization did not work to improve the processes to activate a recall of this defective part on a product they manufactured, and the culture in which this organization is based was an active determent to achieve customer satisfaction regarding...