QUALITY PLAN: IMPROVED PROCESS AND DATA COLLECTION IN AN AUTOMOBILE MANUFACTURING COMPANY
The focus company in this analysis is an automobile manufacturing plant of a major automobile manufacturing company. The process requiring improvement is quality control. The quality control problem is manifested in an unacceptable product recall rate. The gap analysis of the problem is presented in Exhibit 1 (below).
Exhibit 1 รน Gap Analysis: Product Quality
Company, Industry, Best Practice, & Gap
Automobile Manufacturing Industry Norm
Data Sources: Fine & St. Clair, 1996; Consad Research Corporation, 2003
Addressing the identified gap in product quality requires that management at the plan improve the product quality inspection process. An "As Is"-to-"To Be" process flowchart illustrating the required process change is presented in Exhibit 2 (on the following page).
Summarization of Organizational Requirements
The plant organization will require resources to provide for the enhanced quality control testing to close the gap related to the product recall rate. Resources are required to provide for (a) comprehensive testing of all electronics and computer systems and (b) computer-based testing of all systems following final preparation.
Consad Research Corporation. (2003, May). Estimating Economic impacts of new dimensional control technology applied to automobile body manufacturing. Journal of Technology Transfer, 23(2), 53-60. Accessed on the Internet on 2004-04-17 at: http://www.atp.nist.gov/eao/jtt/consad.htm
Fine, C. H., & St. Clair, R. (1996, December). U.S. industry faces the 21st century: The U.S. automobile manufacturing industry. Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Commerce.
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