The automotive industry is in agreement: the quality standards QS 9000 and VDA 6.2 are history – at least they will be by the end of 2004 when they are replaced by ISO/TS 16949. Carmaker Opel and two of its suppliers in Germany – Infineon and Takata-Petri – put the case for the new standard.
Says Oliver Steinhoff of Opel AG, We supply a global market, so that one standard is only right. And, in that the deadline is 2004, the suppliers also have enough time to adapt. Steinhoff is director of total quality assurance management in Rüsselsheim, Germany. He talks to DNV Forum with Norbert Ernst, acting director, plant support, for GM Europe.
Troubleshooting
If something goes wrong, its easier to find the reason and do something about it, says Ernst. And an independent third party will see your systems with new eyes as well as having wide experience gained from others, adds Steinhoff. Its important to have a common set of rules that everyone could have confidence in and trust. This need will not diminish, but we dont know what place certification will have in ten years time. Competition and market requirements have reduced the number of suppliers, but quality has improved and thats important for a company such as Opel, with almost 2,500 suppliers.
Quality initiatives
Oliver Steinhoff describes four major initiatives for improving Opels quality:
1) When work starts on a new car model, it is important that both ease of production and quality are at least at the same level as the previous model preferably better. Steinhoff calls these ambitious targets.
2) The continuous improvement of current cars, carried out by a special team of engineers.
3) Suppliers account for 6070% of the value and 75% of the quality of the product. To achieve maximum benefit from this collaboration, Opel must enter into partnerships with suppliers, all of whom must meet the same quality standards.
4) Harmonisation of quality processes. This applies all the way from design, development and purchasing to the validation of the product, manufacture of the car, the dealer and the after-purchase market.
Harmonising two systems
Takata-Petri in Aschaffenburg, not far from Rüsselsheim, is one of Opels principal suppliers. Airbag manufacturer Petri AG, the company that was merged with Japans Takata in 2000, was chosen as Supplier of the Year by GM Corporation Worldwide Purchasing in 1997. Now a car can have up to 16 airbags, and safety products are Takata-Petris main business area, including airbags, steering wheels and safety belts.
The ISO/TS 16949 gives us a unique opportunity to harmonise two systems the QS 9000 and the VDA 6.1 and to concentrate on just the one, says Dr Klaus Brand, director of quality assurance (Europe) at Takata-Petri. He emphasises that Takata-Petri plans to have the best of both the practical and theoretical parts of the two former standards.
The standard has changed from being element-oriented to process-oriented. This has been a big step for us. Not only have we combined the two standards, we have also tried to meet the requirements of ISO 9001:2000. This was highly appreciated by all our departments. They had already worked on process orientation, and now they were given the opportunity to make these more practical.
Next step EFQM
The next step for us is EFQM (European Foundation of Quality Management). First we have to stabilise the processes, says Dr Brand, who envisages a two-year stabilisation phase before the company goes further with the EFQM model.
Takata-Petri Europe manufactures 13 million airbags, 4.5 million steering wheels and 5.4 million safety belts each year. Dr Brand explains, Opel is one of our oldest customers and we supply all the leading car manufacturers. Business excellence are the magic words. But nothing is so good it cant be improved.
Ready for beyond certification
Infineon Technologies, one of the worlds leading semiconductor manufacturers, serves a broad range of markets from its Munich base. It is a principal supplier to Opel, and sponsors the Jordan Formula1 and Audi Le Mans racing teams.
Leo Stuehler, director of corporate quality management, supports the implementation of the ISO/TS 16949, but is ready to go beyond certification. Starting in 1987 with an ISO 9000 certificate followed by QS 9000 in 1997, and as a three times finalist in the European Quality Award (EQA), we had all the processes in place long before ISO9000:2000 and ISO/TS 16949 were launched. It was a very good excercise for the whole company.
Stuehler would like to see more flexibility in future and options for alternative ways to demonstrate compliance to the standard. To be successful in the semiconductor business, innovation and quality are a must, he states. Our manufacturing flow from raw material (silicon wafers) to finished product consists of some 500 processes; the processing times add up to about 30 days. To maintain a competitive level of overall performance we have to focus on quality in every element of our business.
So were very interested in schemes that give us fewer audit days and greater recognition of our own self-assessments. As long as the automotive industry wants certificates, well naturally maintain our certificates. In the long run, however, we want to influence the leading automotive companies preferably with the help of DNV to further develop methods for achieving improved quality. The Automotive Excellence programme launched by VDA the association of the German automotive industry is a first move in the direction of partnerships based more on mutual trust than on certificates.