That, sir, is my fear too...and that electorate is alive and well and living off the rest of us.

Ouch...how painful. I have seen a lot of Prius drivers who push the little things hard. I go up a winding hill and the first little spot and they zoom by. I try not to push the Fiesta as I have to milk another 50K or so out of it until it is paid off and maybe, just maybe, the Gaultian dream of an Elio will come true...

And, as I've been saying for a while now, "An electorate dumb enough to put O in the WH TWICE is probably stupid enough to put Hillary there, too."

Don't blame me... I would never vote for her, but mark my words just for the hell of it.

:) I was very happy with my 92 or so Taurus until a few designed-in stupidities cost me much more than I ever wanted to spend on minor repairs.
Ignition switch broke loose from the lockout gears in the steering column and if I didn't have an aftermarket remote starter, I could not have driven home... from the dealer's! Hundreds of dollars to fix a fifty-cent bad design of a tiny plastic lever.
Then I discovered that when Jiffy-Lube refilled my radiator flush with tap water and saved themselves the cost of replenishing the antifreeze, the heater core rusted out and flooded the floor pan under the front seats. $50 or so for the new radiator core, but $400 in labor to field-strip the entire dashboard to get the new one in.
But hey, my '69 Corvette had a bad solder joint holding the radiator's drain plug in. Took a year or so for the dealer and local 'decision makers' to cough up the $100 or so for the $10 radiator repair followed by the water pump replacement, since that innocent byspinner died as a consequence, too.
Top of the line Chevy; highest volume Ford at the time...
My Prius? Yearly oil changes and checkups and other than that, insert gas and go.
Life in America.
Happy motoring!

Oh, it isn't Oregon, but our Raleigh area of NC is just LOUSY with Priuses. They're freaking Everywhere! :)

As well you should. It cannot be fixed because there is nothing to fix it with. All the money we put into it was stolen by successive administrations with the old "IOU". The IOU's are due and no one is paying, so basically we were swiped. We cannot 5 why dishonest behavhior, and they cannot fix it unless they find a way to bring back all the money they stole. Which they never will, of course. One reason I am against our current cast of clowns in government. It would take a complete wipe and rewrite to get this program running again and they will never step down. So we are stuck.

plusaf, actually I am in Oregon. I work in Aloha, near beaverton, and live in a little hole in the wall town 62 miles to the southwest. My Fiesta gets 40-42 until I put studs on, then drops to 37 or so. For an 18K "economy car" it has all bells and whistles, but build is shoddy in some places (broke the drivers door arm shifting in my seat, there was no support to lean on) and Ford claimed to have "bumper to bumper" warranty. I pointed out door was between bumpers but they delayed 3 months and then "so sorry" warranty is up. Will never buy Ford again, horrible service and customer service. I like Elio because he is Gault like. He has a vision, and believes he has a market. At 83 mpg, 6800.00 he is betting there are enough people who really only want something that can get them to and from work, and is fun to drive. Cool little thing with three wheels. I am sure gas will blow to 4.00 a gallon by summer after the Saudi's quit playing, and if they can find 240 million to start up, they say they can deliver by early 2016. I risked 1000 on them being able to do it.

And you're right about the bundling part, but one of the flip sides is that there is at least some inherent benefit to 'build to order' which commits the customer to a sizeable down-payment to lock in their desired features and options, PLUS the fact that inventory sitting unsold on a Dealer's lot "waiting for someone to stumble across what they're really looking for" cost them tons of inventory carrying costs plus moves the legwork from the order/manufacturing System directly onto the shoulders of the Customer! Not exactly the guy/gal you want to irritate if you're the seller, no?

It's actually a Business Model type of thing and all business models are built on decisions and tradeoffs (my First Law) and once in place, are pretty much set in stone. Until something ... what's the term we used to use?... A Stochastic Shock to the System forces fundamental change.

Such is life. Been there, participated, observed...

John Layden... http://www.insideindianabusiness.com/con...

Nick and Robbie... actually, I've used the idea of SIX levels down as an average, but it all really depends on the Problem and its complexity.

I won't deny the excellent point you made, Robbie, about "actionable root" and that makes a lot of sense. In my (limited) experience but lots of observations, the higher level 'actionable' things may look good on the surface, but if they aren't well thought out and linked to any underlying Real Root Cause, in the longer run, those 'solutions' will end up being more expensive and failure-prone than if Real Root Cause were sought out.

Basically, when I've looked for Root Cause, the conversation with other folks really doesn't identify Truly Actionable Solutions at a sufficiently 'deep level' to be a good long-term solution.

A trivial example is Funding Social Security in the US... the lack of indexing of contributions Plus the changes to life expectancy are simple Root Causes that appear easy to address, but the Problem developed across scores of years and multiple generations of Americans! Most of the Solutions you'll read about look out a whole five or ten years with the expectation of Fixing The Problem Without Causing Anyone Any Discomfort.

And that's where I raise my hand... :)

Robbie... in late '03 when I put my $500 down to "reserve a car" they were building to forecast and not to order and the wait time WAS multiple months... as much time as you outlined above. Building to order At That Time, at least, didn't look as if it would have been any faster OR slower... And even back then, the container ships were crossing the Pacific, transiting the Canal and delivering to Gulf or Atlantic ports in a matter of weeks, not months. Toyota just made their own decisions for their own reasons, and since demand completely outstripped supply then and for several years to follow, I trust they were not about to toss out their entire order/ship/deliver process. I bit the bullet and now have over 66k miles on my '04. Just starting to think about replacing it, but nothing seems to break and it still out-corners anyone who tries to tailgate me! :)

Nick, an old friend of mine got a Ford Hybrid and just loves it. We got my wife a Prius V in '12 when her Camry XLE started leaking in multiple places under the hood. Probably would have done as well with a good steam-cleaning (cheaper than a new car, probably, including whatever repairs were actually needed) but 40mpg and lots of bells and whistles and she's quite happy with the V. And without even checking, Nick, I'll bet you're not in the US... our selections, economics and lots of other aspects are way different from many other parts of the world.

Like, my '04 took me, wife and two dogs across the US FIVE times, Pulling a small trailer, to the tune of 11,000 miles and still averaged around 35 mpg, down from its normal 45 or so.

Ya look at your needs and wants and decide accordingly.... a Very Gulchy Decision :) of course.

That is true, but they callede it 5 why because in Japan, they felt that it took at LEAST 5 to get to root cause because of the layers of interactions, managers, engineers and materials. I saw an example that took no less than 11 whys to get to a reason why doors were installed incorrectly in one plant and it involved a who slew of reasons. The process will find a root cause but requires a very disciplined approach to not get distracted by an issue you find that is not it, but also needs fixing. I do like it though as an analysis technique when trying to improve procedures and training.

Really... the Prius thing amazed me because I looked at getting one, and NO ONE had any (about three years ago), and when they did, it was these three or nothing. So I got a Ford Fiesta, which still wasn't a bright choice. I am now patiently waiting for an Elio (3 wheels, 83mpg, 6800.00) which they have delayed from late 2015 to 2016, if they can find 240 million in funding. Hope they do, I have 1500 riding on it, and my Fiesta is almost at 100K, and I never know when a Ford will implode. Elio reminds me of Gault though, except he isn't stopping the motor, just trying to make it run rough...

:) in 1983 or so, I met the guy who introduced "6-Sigma" to Motorola and visited one of Motorola's manufacturing plants with him to see how it really worked.

It was originally a way of gaining control over variance in manufacturing. Until you can make your manufacturing processes extremely repeatable (ie, narrow dispersion of the sometimes-Gaussian distribution of some parameter,) there's no way in hell that you can move the desirable peak to where you want or need it to be! He was/is a wizard of that. Motorola didn't invent it.

Actually, funny you should mention Toyota... I ordered one of the second-generation Priuses around the end of 2003. Turned out that what Toyota was doing back then was to quesstimate demand for colors, models and options, then order the parts to manufacture them, then manufacture them, then ship the output to the US. Dealers would 'horse-trade' with each other to get the combinations their live customers wanted.

That amused me, because I ORDERED my First Car from a Chevy dealer back in 1968 and GM, at that time, let me choose from a large list of options for what I preferred. And then they built it to my spec and delivered it.

Toyota had obviously made a semi-conscious Management Decision that Build-To-Order would be cheaper for them at the hidden price of customer aggravation.

They've been quite successful, overall, with that style, but I've always wondered if the alternative might have served them (and me) better...

Who knows... I'm not an Auto Executive... I'm just a lowly EE... :))))))

Ah, that is incorporated into Lean (which is a bandwagon to get into if you can, I got 6 sigma green belted and plan to milk a consultancy) as the "5 whys" and gets attributed (as is with almost all else efficient) with Toyota and their system. But Socrates can take the credit I am not fussy, but it does work, and is a much better way to find the real problem, not a complicated result of one. "I dove off the tree and did a bachelors in Science (InfoTech) thru University of Phoenix (which convinced me college is a boondoggle, but WTH), but they had a class in Critical Thinking which was not very critical. But it may be a small opening in the wall of ignorance and blame that currently exists as "logic".

Spot on, Nick... I was with RCA Solid State in NJ for ten years, from 1968 to 1978, then did 4 years with HP in Power MOS-FETs before moving into the World of Computers at HP for another 20 years or so before Carly paid me to take my experience (and wisdom?) and get the hell out during her "downsizing to success" programs.

Too many stories to tell, unless I publish an autobiography some day... :)

My theory is that some time in the 80s or 90s, Critical Thinking died in the US and other places around the world.

Everyone demanded a completely safe, no-risk world and demanded that they not have to pay for it.

Today, I've had almost too much fun pursuing what a friend informed me to be the Socratic Method...

If someone complains about a Problem, I ask them to consider WHY that problem exists.

When they come up with their First Reason Why (which is inevitably wrong), I ask them, "Well, why does THAT happen?"

All in an effort to try to drive them towards looking for the Real Root Cause of that initial complaint.

I've already corrupted one grandson's mind with that... we sat at lunch a month or so ago drilling down into a problem he brought up, and by HIS count, peeled that onion back something like eleven layers, without even getting to something we could agree was Root Cause.

His mom jumped in around level five or six with HER 'answer' to 'why that happens,' and I merely bounced "well, why does THAT happen" off her and she left the discussion immediately and I went back to onion-peeling with her son.

Such fun.
However, I have noticed a LOT more Mentions of "Critical Thinking" on blogsites and even in newspaper articles! Makes me very happy.

Almost gives me hope for the future...

Plusaf, I too work in industry and computers (after 20 years going underwater), I am at 19 years with a major chip maker (the only one) and we are working the fine line between cost cutting, quality, and what is right. The new CEO has some new ideas that will make things interesting. But overall, I have found the dumbing down of education has made it's way into the business world and leaves it's mark in the things you find everyday: poor quality, things broke right out of the box, and a design only a mad scientist (or Rube Goldberg) can appreciate.

You got that right... All authority; no responsibility.

Hey, Nick, my first flight was somewhere back in the mid to late 1960s, and in the late 60s and 70s it WAS a real treat to fly. Crew and passengers were neat, well-dressed and polite.

After that, flying got less expensive and everyone and their screaming kids boarded the planes and a lot of the fun bailed out.

In my experience, the airlines that kept a sense of humor about the discomfort of their customers became the ones that were the most fun to fly. I tend to blame the loss of that 'sense of humor' (or plain 'humanity') on stupid middle- and upper-management, trained by all the B-Schools which taught from the same playbooks, emphasizing cost cutting as THE WAY to higher profits, rather than the now-unheard-of concept of "customer satisfaction."

I worked 'in industry' (semiconductors and computers) for over 30 years, and MY focus was ALWAYS on customer satisfaction, whether the 'customer' was a sales rep I was helping or an end-user customer trying to choose the right solution to solve their problems.

And in that vein, I was hugely successful... until a lot of MY management bought into the idea of profit being The Goal, at the expense of everything else.

I'd love to bring my attitude back into companies, but I've only seen one or two who have that kind of measurement in their goals list.

So I live in my Gulch and don't get a lot of job offers regarding my skills. I've worked in Marketing long enough to know that if there's no market demand for your skills, you ain't gonna get any market share, no matter how good your 'product' is.

The causes and effects that happened since the '60s are much more complex than anyone ever lists in a discussion of the topics. I love Socrates.

Best flight was in 1963, from New Orleans to Gulfport, MS. In a DC3, at night with flames coming out the exhausts on both sides. The roar of the engines and the low altitude let you see all the houses along the way. Other than a flight in a B-17 a couple years ago (450.00 for 30 mins) everything else has been cattlecar.

Uh Oh, you want someone to be responsible? I'm afraid that was not in the legislation, Executive order, Mandate, or publication. Sorry sir, move along, anal probe is next....

Mr. Bond liked it too...although he tended to make abrupt stops/starts and left a trail of bodies behind...

The whole money machine of credit cards, membership etc is another reason to just rent a car and drive or skip the whole damn trip. I want to buy the service to get me from point a to B, not take a scenic trip, not visit every airport in Amerca, just go from A to B. Safely. Securely. And not harrassed or discriminated against because I don't "belong". It's all BS.

T HUB thing is a great example of insanity based on logic. Having your flights feed a specific site to lump them all together is not a bad idea, but when you take people all over hells half acre (as in fly to Denver from Portland (OR) to then fly to San Francisco), it goes crazy. Your flight shows it, I cannot believe it is more efficient to go up and down 4 times to get some where south, and you end up going east then north. It might make some skewed insane sense to them but fails the common sense test. Yet you cannot find a ticket to go to A from B, without going threough C,D, E,F. It must be so you can pay all the fees and taxes along the way, and support the food courts.