 Finally, Ford engineers decided to take apart the two different transmissions.The American-made car parts were all within specified tolerance levels.However, the Japanese car parts were virtually identical to each other, and much closer to the nominal values for the parts—e.g., if a part was supposed to be one foot long, plus or minus 1/8 of an inch (300 mm ± 3 mm)—then the Japanese parts were all within 1/16 of an inch (1.5 mm), less variation.