Initiating a global quality initiative for an automotive supplier within three days

“Within only three days, both as a team and in the measures we worked out, we laid the foundation for a global quality initiative that will significantly move our company forward. The systematic and outcome-oriented approach was at a level that we had not previously experienced.

Joachim Schuster, Senior Manager, Quality Engineering,
Magna Powertrain

Magna is an international automotive supplier with one of its sector’s highest turnovers worldwide. Among Magna’s core values are customer orientation, continuous improvement, and a zero-defect strategy.

In order to meet the increased expectations of OEMs and live up to the own zero-defect strategy, Magna Powertrain in 2015 set the goal of further strengthening its quality objectives. Within this context, a quality initiative was started to permanently lower warranty costs, reduce quality issues with OEMs, and cut down on the defective goods resulting from quality deficits occurring during production.

“We were looking for an external partner who could support us in defining measures – within a few days and in an international team – that would enable the company to reach its quality goals in 2020,” said Joachim Schuster, Senior Manager, Quality, Magna Powertrain.

Furthermore, the defined measures were expected to be assessed with regard to their impact, a road map was to be created, and a change and communication plan drawn up. Since the participants from quality, development, and production functions in various locations had never before worked together in this configuration, there was also the challenge of forming an internationally active team. 3DSE’s procedure is based on a behavior-oriented, emergent approach to involve the employees from the start and to transform them into an autonomously working team. A success factor analysis, as well as an analysis of existing problems and risks, formed the starting point for defining measures for the quality initiative. This analysis concurrently served as a reference in order to be able to quantitatively assess the impact of the measures. The necessary measures were then defined and detailed in work cells, applying the knowledge about the success factors and existing risks and problems. These measures concerning process, product, and organization were then quantitatively assessed with regard to their impacts on the quality goals. The measures were then put into concrete packages, which were assigned responsible persons and became ready for implementation starting the next day.

“The result of intensively working together for just a few days was the beginning of a global quality initiative with a clear idea about the current quality situation and the measures required for reaching our goals. The measures that were worked out still have a very high relevance for our current quality work,” Schuster continued.