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I acknowledge your assertion that Norfolk Southern had a responsibility to have control over the quality of critical components of rail cars. I have zero firsthand knowledge of Norfolk Southern's or it's suppliers exact QA/QC programs. So…. I will describe issues with other industries in which I am acquainted. I will say though that Norfolk Southern is generally regarded as a high end company in their industry.

By the 1990s, there were critical quality control problems with basic materials such as piping and associated fittings used in the chemical, refining and oil production industries. The issue was nonconforming materials, their fabrication and fraudulent documentation certifying conformance to specific standards. The primary root cause? Counterfeit raw materials and finished parts from Asia (errr China). The distribution chain was contaminated.

ISO9000 QA/QC programs to the rescue. ISO9000 series programs give a framework to track end use products all the way back to the starting raw materials and verify conformance to engineering standards.. As an example, common PVC pipe.

XYZ chemical company produces millions of pounds per year of PVC pellets and sells these to product fabricators. XYZ company is an ISO9000 company and provides appropriate certification of conformance to their fabricator customers. The ISO9000 certified fabricator makes their product, say PVC pipe and fittings. Everything is documented to verify that their raw materials are from XYZ chemical company and that their products comply with specific engineering standards. All this is traceable.

The product fabricator then sells to a specialty distributor that is not ISO9000 certified. The quality chain can be broken and assume it is. A buyer makes a good deal and gets shipment of it bulk PVC items at a big discount. The distributor sells these imitations as name brand and makes a bigger profit. Now, these cheap PVC piping items have the appropriate stamping on them as to manufacturer, engineering standards and such. Is the distributor an idiot or corrupt? Take your pick, fraudulent ISO documentation goes forward towards the end user.

Say the fraudulent PVC components are installed then fail unexpectedly in conditions that on paper should not be a problem. People can be hurt and $$$ lost.

All this I've described is a setup to one solution I encountered in the process industry. A high end industrial fabricator implemented two entirely segregated parts rooms and manufacturing lines. These were entirely separate buildings, no interconnection at all. One building was high level ISO9000 tracked all the way from the XYZ company making the PVC pellets through to their parts room then to the fabrication floor. The middleman distributor was completely cut out of the chain. I've seen this scenario played out in a number of industries.

And…. Once again I've rambled too long. Off I go!