I think it was an evolution. In the eighties, for example, when profits were fatter, the PPAP system was strictly more of a quality system to ensure that there were high-quality parts being mounted on vehicles. It is a structured system and it has different levels of approvals. Say you have an assembly, a head lamp, for example. You would have the lens, you would have the inside...you would have maybe four or five parts. The problem is if one part out of five does not pass, then the whole assembly is rejected. You may be the tool shop that built the four good ones, but the one bad one held back the PPAP. It was a failure. You didn't get paid.
Now, maybe in the eighties they had some money and they could have paid you. Profits were a little better. Tool shops could afford to carry the money. Then with the cost cutbacks and target pricing, the margins became thinner and it became harder to carry the money. It spiralled, and a lot of the Detroit three started to pressure their suppliers for 5% a year on a five-year program, or they would move it. What happened then is you had tooling going overseas. Now the tooling pie became smaller and all of a sudden it became a buyer's market.
Tool shops, by definition, will fall over backwards trying to work for the customer. It is nothing for a toolmaker to work 30- or 48-hour days in a row to get a tool out on time. When we have a delivery date on a tool, we are quoted to the day, sometimes to the hour, and we'll have it at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, or whatever. I hate to put it this way, but what happens is it almost becomes like a battered person syndrome. You become fearful of the customer, and you will not fight back because you are a typical 20- or 30-employee company that does $3 million or $4 million a year. Do you really think you're going to take on GM? Their legal department is bigger than your whole company.