It found that Takata's program for monitoring the quality of its airbags, installed in tens of millions of cars worldwide, was poorly designed and structured, and relied too much on the automakers' oversight.
"There is no stand-alone Takata program aimed at identifying quality-related problems with Takata products once they are in the vehicle fleet. And there are limited formal systems for consolidating and analyzing what information Takata does collect," the report said.
The panel also pointed to one potential immediate problem with the airbags: The inflator propellant is often loaded by hand, not machine.