Firestone Will Weather Storm, Executive Says
Bridgestone/Firestone Inc.’s top executive in the U.S. pledged Thursday to restore the tire maker’s good name in the wake of a far-reaching tire recall and said the embattled Firestone brand will not be scrapped.
Chief Executive Masatoshi Ono also defended the firm against allegations from accident victims’ lawyers and former Firestone workers that the company suffered from quality-control problems. He added that Bridgestone/Firestone will cooperate with congressional hearings that were announced this week.
Acknowledging that Bridgestone/Firestone has suffered a black eye as a result of the recall and federal investigation, Ono said he would further speed up the recall, which is expected to be completed by about March.
“I feel this is unacceptable,” Ono said in an interview with The Times at Bridgestone/Firestone headquarters in Nashville. “I expect I’ll be able to announce soon that we’ll be able to shorten the time frame.” He noted that the company is airlifting tires in from Japan, but he did not say how much sooner the recall might be completed.
The company, a division of Japan’s Bridgestone Corp., announced on Aug. 9 that it was recalling an estimated 6.5 million 15-inch tires, installed mostly as original equipment on Ford Explorer sport-utility vehicles, because of accidents blamed on the tires’ treads peeling off at high speeds.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating at least 54 deaths related to Firestone tire failures.
Class-action and personal-injury lawyers as well as consumer groups say bigger 16-inch Firestone tires also have problems with tread separation, which can cause drivers to lose control of their vehicles, sometimes resulting in fatal rollovers.
Such advocates in Florida said Thursday that Firestone knowingly produced shoddy tires and demanded a recall of 16-inch versions of the ATX, ATX II and Wilderness AT series tires. The current recall targets 15-inch models of those tires.
Ono said it was the first he had heard of the allegations and could not comment. But he said he had seen no evidence to support a recall of 16-inch tires.
“Sixteen-inch tires are part of the monitoring process,” said Christine Karbowiak, Bridgestone/Firestone’s vice president for communications. “We’ve looked at the data, reviewed products, and we believe it’s a properly structured recall.”
Asked about depositions by former Firestone workers saying they were unable to carry out proper quality control because they were driven to overproduce to meet demand, Ono insisted that product quality is world-class.
“All our plants meet QS9000 standards,” he said, referring to internationally recognized quality guidelines. “I don’t know details of what particular workers said they did, but I have complete confidence in our products’ quality.”
Ono acknowledged, however, that quality control at Bridgestone/Firestone is constantly evolving as part of kaizen, or “continuous improvement”--a self-critiquing process that is a hallmark of Japanese manufacturing firms.
Contradicting previous reports, he said Firestone had not been preparing to alter the design of the tires in question earlier this year.
The recall is the second major crisis to hit the Firestone brand. A costly recall of 14 million Firestone 500 tires in 1978--also for tread separation--devastated the brand’s reputation.
But Ono said the Firestone name is not in danger of extinction. “Firestone is a brand long trusted by customers,” he said. “We’re thinking of all kinds of ways to revive the brand. I’m sure we can do it.”
Last week Firestone took out full-page newspaper ads in 41 markets giving details on how to identify the recalled tires. On Wednesday it took out more ads promising to work hard to carry out the recall.
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HARSH WORDS
Ford gets a scolding from the U.S. Transportation secretary. A1
