I haven't read all of this thread, so apologies if this is redundant.
I worked in a manufacturing environment for Japanese automotive supplier for awhile as Engineering Test Lab Supervisor. The Japanese have an interesting approach, whenever a flaw was found in our product by one of our customers, my company would:
1) obfuscate and deny the nature of the issue (even though we established it as our fault in the lab)
2) work feverishly to rework/redesign to eliminate the problem
Usually this resulted in the problem disappearing before it came to a head. Sometimes, if the problem lasted very long, procedures require an explanation and my company (understand this is total BS) would maintain that the components from other suppliers were on one extreme of the tolerance, but since we were such a "good supplier" we'd narrowed our tolerance to resolve the issue. People are busy and will generally accept whatever explanation is offered as long as the problem got fixed.
This seems typical for the Japanese. Their culture makes them very reluctant to place blame and the easiest way to avoid having to place blame is to never admit the problem.
I always wondered, when reading Consumer Reports' evaluation of the number of recalls and technical bulletins, what the numbers would be like if the Japanese were as forthright as other countries in admitting their mistakes.
I got a fair amount of pressure to "cook" the data from the Test Lab to reflect management's preferred version of the problem (it would be cleaner for them to have these "adjustments" to the data made at the source). I'm proud to say I never yielded, but I'm also quite happy not to work there anymore. Those were bad years.
