Kobe Steel Blames Plant Managers for Quality Control Scandal<br />TOKYO — When a roll of aluminum produced at a Kobe Steel factory fell short of customers’ exacting demands for qualities like strength, plant managers were supposed to make a painful<br />but necessary decision: Start again and make a new, better roll of metal, even if it cost the company time and money.<br />The report by the Japanese steel maker represents its first public accounting of the causes of a data falsification scandal<br />that has shaken the company and prompted around 500 of its customers around the world — including manufacturers of cars, trains and aircraft — to scramble to verify the safety of their products.<br />“As long as the revenue was coming in, management wasn’t interested.”<br />Mr. Kawasaki said the practice of misrepresenting not-quite-perfect metals was at least a decade old but that, because records going back further than<br />that were incomplete, it may have been going on longer.<br />The report, produced by Kobe Steel without input from regulators or other outside parties, concluded<br />that the company had erred by elevating the pursuit of short-term profit over the maintenance of scrupulous quality standards.<br />But for at least a decade, according to an internal company report released on Friday, those managers<br />took an easier way out, manipulating test data on some products to avoid expensive do-overs.
