[lazulicurio]

IMO it's a combination of multiple factors. Chasing short term profits definitely plays a role, but there are other cultural factors. An adversarial relationship with labor[1]. Over-reliance on inspection processes to catch production issues. Poor engineering culture that focuses on individual issues as they occur instead of taking a systems-level view. Over-reliance on metrics and KPIs. Performance review criteria that incentivize ignoring or under-reporting issues[2].

Also note that fuel pumps may not be the best example. American manufacturing of mechanical components has gotten a lot better over the past couple of decades. But electronic components are the new opportunity to repeat the mistakes of the pasts.

[1] Watch https://youtu.be/qg8bbFwZLMA?t=1760 through about 44:20, which is an decent overview (although the explanation of Kaizen focuses too much on efficiency). Compare the description of the Japanese relationship with labor to how labor is usually treated in the US. Also notice from 36:40 on how much focus is put on technology versus process (although that may be forgiven since it is a TV show).

[2] For example, in theory you may say your employees have the authority to stop production if they notice an issue. But if the line workers are graded on how many parts they produce, and the engineers are graded on how much downtime there is, nobody is going to report anything.