Quote:
Originally Posted by fuelmiser
I can't say the same about their oil filters. Honda nor do other car manufacturers make their own filters. They all go out to the lowest bidder.
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I can't respond to the specific performance of the Honda Oil filters (I've never seen lab results of such product testing), but your statement about having oil filters being made by the lowest bidder seems overly simplistic because I think it omits two very important considerations:
1) I would be incredibly surprised if Honda and other car manufacturers don't provide to anybody bidding on portions of their sub manufacturing business (including oil filters) some VERY detailed product specifications for each and every auto part that carries their name on it. That in itself does not insure a quality product, but almost always you can expect the product has, at minimum, the design and performance specifications detailed as a requirement by the manufacturer. I don't think it's left up to the whim of the supplier to decide.
2) Quality control: Just as if you were running a business with sub manufacturers, I'm quite sure that Honda periodically inspects random samples of sub production supplied to them to insure such product, at minimum, meets their design specifications. They would also do this if they manufactured the oil filters themselves,by the way, just to insure quality control compliance.
Supplier contracts can be written with an incredible amount of detail (thanks to the lawyers) and can provide all sorts of remedies if sub manufacturer production does not meet agreed manufacturing and performance specifications. These remedies can be quite "painful" and are intended to discourage the subs from making independent "on the fly" design changes (usually to reduce cost) that result in production not meeting specification....these remedies can involve direct reimbursement all all costs incurred by the manufacturer as a result such deficiencies by a sub manufacturer. The potential liability could be many times greater than the replacement cost of the sub manufactured component.
Bottom line....whether or not Honda makes the oil filters or subs them out per their product specifications-- I just don't think that fact alone is all that important with the way manufacturing is done today. Certainly much more is involved than just getting the "lowest bidder" as you seem to be suggesting.
FYI, I work in an un-related business that uses hundreds of sub contractors to manufacture what we sell and components of what we sell. Yes, we usually go with the lowest bidder that can reliably do the job per our requirements, but all bidders must meet the same exacting product specifications we provide. We constantly do production lab checks to insure quality control and no tampering of the specifications has taken place subsequently during production. In some situations we even do sub- manufacturing plant inspections to see first-hand the manufacturing in progress.
