Everyone fibs now and then, but it’s probably not on when you do it more than 100,000 times, and not when it involves an item such as braking components on a car. But that’s what Japanese auto parts supplier Akebono Brake Industry did, the company revealing last week that it had found about 114,000 instances of misconduct, some stretching as far back as 2001.
As reported by the Nikkei, these included the falsification of inspection data of brakes and their components. Of the latter, around 5,000 cases failed to clear quality standards the company had agreed with its OEM customers, which included Toyota and Nissan, but these components were delivered on to at least 10 companies.
The company said it inspected about 190,000 pieces of data from regular inspections conducted under agreements with clients, and had found that around 60% of these reports included falsifications. In addition to the false inspection results, there were also instances in which data was fabricated for inspections that were not carried out. The misconduct was found at four of its factories in Japan.
Akebono president Yasuhiro Miyaji apologised for the impropriety, and blamed it partly on infrequent personnel changes in inspections. He however said Akebono does not expect to issue a recall for the components in question. “There are no problems with safety, and we have had automakers confirm this as well,” he stated.
An Akebono spokesperson said that the company inspected these components again and “judged that there were no problems with their performance.”
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