Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Spoilsport
 at the idea that Japanese auto manufacturers and their vendors (e.g. Denso) are not documenting the shit out of their control system software.
"Unintended Acceleration", anyone?
No, I'm not an industry insider and so of course, I'm speculating.
But if *you* were running Toyota, would you be content with a "brain trust" and scanty docs? If you were a part of any .gov DOT, would *you* be content with this? |
There's a difference between documentation that Matlab spits out, basically boilerplate block diagrams, and documentation of how it actually works. In a usable "how to" form. You can reverse engineer anything, and in a global company sometimes you have to reverse engineer your own products. I realize that sounds absurd, but in global companies there are lots of divisions that don't talk to each other or trust each other for that matter.
As for the brain trust, it's part of Japanese business culture. Many Japanese companies are paranoid about corporate espionage, especially from companies in developing countries.