PLSO The Oregon Surveyor March April 2021

15 Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org Featured Article Quality Assurance in Surveying and Mapping By Fred Henstridge, LS QA/QC I n 2003, the Mercedes Benz motorcar company had dropped from No.1 to 26th place on the J.D. Powers and Asso- ciates, Inc. 1 rating of auto manufacturers in the category of quality. This was eight slots below the industry average, trailing Chrysler and Ford. In 1991, Mercedes ranked No. 1 in quality and customer satisfaction; by 2000 they had dropped to No. 6 and by 2003 to 26th. Some of the problems cited in the J.D. Powers reports were handling, braking, shocks and struts, electronic window controls, and inaccurate fuel gauges. How did this one-time industry nameplate fall on such hard times? The problems cited in the survey arose from three models from the year 2000, including the midsize E-Class sedan, Mer- cedes’ big money maker. In the 1990s Toyota and Nissan stormed the U.S. mar- ket with lower-priced luxury cars such as the Lexus and Infiniti. To compete, Mercedes’ engineers had to overhaul their process of building cars. Instead of letting design determine the cost, engi- neers had to design cars to meet a target price. These German engineers, accus- tomed to designing for quality, weren’t very good at this practice. Quality took a back seat. Fortunately for Mercedes, this situation did not last long and the company regrouped and went back to its roots, designing for quality and value. Several years ago, the firm I work for re - ceived a call from a Mercedes engineer in Stuttgart, Germany requesting that we take elevations on a section of the Har- bor Freeway in Los Angeles. They wanted elevations taken to 3millimeters on a ten- foot-by-ten-foot grid along a very rough section of this heavily traveled roadway. PART 1 Quality assurance: Training and mentoring of field staff. It takes years to build a good reputation and about one minute to ruin it. Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in The American Surveyor, www.TheAmericanSurveyor.com , May 2006, copyright 2006 Cheves Media. It is reprinted with permission. To view the original article and the original photos, visit https://amerisurv.com/2006/04/30/qa-qc-quality-assurance-in-surveying-mapping-part-1. Access the original PDF: https://archive.amerisurv.com/PDF/TheAmericanSurveyor_Henstridge-QAQCPart1_May2006.pdf continues T Reference 1) “Mercedes’ Head-on Collision With Qual- ity Survey,” Business Week, July 21, 2003