What do you do if your Automotive Manufacturing process encounters a major quality issue?

Standard procedures aside, Identify if the issue has left your plant , enroute to customer, reached customer, entered customer process. Make sure you expand the scope of containment to the maximum hit area. Get the suspect lot back from customer. Replenish customer with good certified lot ASAP.

Immediate action to be taken on the containment though out the channel (end to end). Analyse the correct root cause through 4M and 1T, Arrest the abnormality amongst the findings you have and act to get the desired outcome and watch for the sustenance. Once the process and product are sustained freeze the parameters to avoid the recurrence in future. Establish the monitoring phase wise till we should get the consistent desired results of the process and products with different ambience.

When an automotive or any other manufacturing process encounters a major quality issue, it’s crucial to take prompt and effective actions to address the problem. Here are some steps you can consider by using the DMAIC approach. Define the Issue Measure and Quantify Analyze the Root Cause Implement Corrective Actions Process Optimization Training and Standardization Material Traceability Monitor and Control Continuous Monitoring Quality Assurance Feedback Loop Additionally, consider using the Eight Disciplines (8D) problem-solving process, commonly employed in the automotive and other industries.

In my opinion containing an issue is critical to maintaining customer satisfaction, brand reputation, and compliance with regulations. It involves immediate action, thorough analysis of root causes, collaboration with cross-functional teams, and implementing effective corrective and preventive measures. Your focus should be on minimizing disruptions to production while ensuring the highest standards of safety, reliability, and performance in the product being manufactured.

Analyzing the cause of a quality issue in a manufacturing process requires a systematic approach to identify underlying factors. Begin by gathering data on the issue, including product specifications, production records, and quality control measures. Utilize tools such as fishbone diagrams, Pareto charts & RCA to pinpoint potential causes, considering 4M & Engage cross-functional teams to brainstorm and validate hypotheses, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of the issue. By combining quantitative data analysis with qualitative insights, manufacturers can effectively diagnose and address the root cause of quality issues, leading to sustainable improvements in product quality and process efficiency.

It is good to have a cross functional team's involvement in identifying the cause but be aware that sometimes "too many cooks spoil the broth". We should follow a systematic approach and split the dictionary to find the potential root causes.

I would say get to the root cause. Not simply cause as there may be a plethora of factors that could arise until you get to the root.

I would like to inform you that CFT is required whereas to do the narrow down to identify possible causes of occurred concern. And a few cases in which we would involve direct employees from the line.

At this point, it is worth to gather the various levels of the defect. This will give us more details of the quality problem and enable us to focus on what triggered the quality issue, whether it be by equipment or the materials used.

I agree with putting in a temporary fix, which is usually considered to be a robust containment. Most of the permanent fix takes time and robust containment is the way to go. We should make sure the temporary fix is durable and reliable.

From finding out the root cause, I would proceed with the immediate corrective action at a pace with careful observation as the initial run may still give informative results that can help us calibrate or improve at that point. Picking up speed, as we get confident results from our immediate solution.

There is no alternative to the testing the solution before implementation. Assembly plants are such fast moving environment that mistakes can result in holds to no sales to recalls. All changes should be durable and reliable and with customer focus in mind. The solutions should be tested in the environment that it will go through in the field.

Usually issues found after the launch are missed in the DFMEA and PFMEA. We must ensure that the FMEA should be updated, as new failure modes are discovered, in various phases of development, and control plans are created to lower the RPNs.

Preparing an initial report to management in order to assign a team of specialists in all stages of design and production...to review all stages of production in order to identify the focus of the error and then conduct research into alternatives and available solutions according to the results.