Most drivers don’t give a second thought to the quality and safety concerns that go into every vehicle on the road. Because automobiles can be a truly dangerous thing in the right circumstances, there are countless considerations and safety measures that exist to ensure optimum performance.
Quality control remains a top priority and helps to ensure automobile manufacturers remain competitive, avoid liabilities and maximize profit. There are so many aspects involved in this broader process that it would take too long to list them all, but let’s review a few of the major quality control factors involved in automobile manufacturing.
Seamless Supply Chain Integration
Above all else, automobile manufacturers guarantee quality by avoiding simple mistakes throughout the production process. Supply chain management and integration revolve around ensuring top-quality products are sourced and that employees up and down the chain of command are working with other aspects of the production process in mind.
Many manufacturers rely on both software and hardware supply chain solutions to improve performance, such as ASI DATAMYTE QM hardware, which provides everything from data collectors to dimensional gages and torque wrenches. The important part in maintaining quality control is to ensure that both software and hardware solutions communicate across multiple departments and tasks up and down the supply chain.
Careful Vendor Inspection
Automobile manufacturers want to operate efficiently and cheaply, but sometimes, that can come at a price. In order to ensure that parts in each automobile function with the highest standards of safety and reliability in mind, quality control on the vendor side is crucial.
Major manufacturers generally put every potential vendor’s offerings through a rigorous inspection and testing process. This ensures that faulty parts do not end up in the supply chain and that vendors that cut corners are not given contracts in the first place.
A “See Something, Say Something” Environment
The most efficient and quality-driven manufacturers understand how crucial it is to point out flaws before they become a problem. As such, proactive manufacturers encourage a “see something, say something” attitude on the plant floor and beyond when it comes to employee attitudes.
For instance, a consistent observation in a particular part’s defective nature might not be reported by some assembly line workers, for fear of retribution. In manufacturing plants where automobile safety and quality is paramount, however, these employees are encouraged to report problems as soon as they are seen. This helps weed out further potential weaknesses in the supply chain and ensures vehicle production quality and safety continue to improve.
After-the-Fact Evaluations
A productive inspection of the supply chain and quality control doesn’t end whenever the vehicle rolls out of the plant. Many manufacturers understand how important quality remains for the life of the automobile, leading to careful inspection of data-points and metrics for years after the fact.
One common example of this is warranty claims and recalls. If there is suddenly a spike in the number of vehicles being recalled or falling under warranty claims, then a quality concern may be present. This can be the impetus for manufacturers revising their vendor selection and quality control processes, with the end result being a higher-quality automobile.
These considerations should be at the top of any automobile manufacturer’s concerns list. By ensuring total integration of the supply chain, careful inspection of potential vendors, proactive cultures that report problems before they become massive and analytical evaluation of automobile performance after the fact, manufacturers can avoid potentially costly problems in the future.