Improvement of internal defect management and data flow in the automobile industry

• Autor(a) principal: Sá, Alexandra Marques Alves de
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/33890
• topic: Automobile industry; Electrical vehicles; High voltage; Quality tools; Quality data systems; Non-conformity products

In recent years, with the greater focus on environmental issues, there has been an increase in demand for hybrid and electric vehicles. For the construction of these more sustainable vehicles, high-voltage electrical cables are produced, which currently implies a continuous productive development. The production of electrical wiring for an automobile must be carried out with strict quality control in order to avoid product defects. This work deals with the management of internal defects in the automotive industry, more specifically in the context of the production of high voltage electrical wiring. Its objective was to seek to improve internal defect management and data flow through the implementation of a new and improved quality database, in the future, common to several factories in Europe and North Africa, and tools from the quality, within the scope of Total Quality Management. Through the PDCA tool, a Quick Response Quality Control was implemented, using monitoring and daily multidisciplinary meetings in order to induce a routine of investigation of identified defects. Furthermore, improved communication between departments was verified and achieved. The methodology applied in the investigation of the root cause of the air leak defect in high voltage wiring consisted of using, simultaneously, four quality tools: the Pareto Diagram, the 5W2H, the Ishikawa Diagram and the 5 Whys. The root cause of the defect was identified in a connector A production issue. In April, the production used only good connectors, with a result of 0.18% defects, registering therefore a significant percentage reduction from 1.79% in the previous month. With the identification of incorrectly used defect codes in the high voltage cabling, which caused inconsistencies in the registration of internal defects, the defect code document was updated, through the collection of information on the factory floor. The database for tracking internal defects was implemented in a pilot area of Yazaki Saltano de Ovar, through the PDCA cycle. The current database (QEDS) and the new one (QDS) were thoroughly analysed. From the application of the two databases in parallel for one month, with the registration of 420 defects, it was found that QDS provided more graphic results than the previous database, and also provided the possibility of a daily analysis, as opposed to the monthly single analytics option of the QEDS. The project results showed significant improvements with the implementations introduced, namely a more effective communication within the team, a better learning environment, improvements in the defect investigation routine and in the data flow.