Ford Motors: Auto Parts and Commercial Vehicles

Discuss about the Ford Motors for Auto Parts and Commercial Vehicles.

Introduction

Ford Motorcars is a US based MNC which was introduced by Henry Ford in 1903, basically deals in automobiles, luxury vehicles, auto parts and commercial vehicles. Ford Motors has many joint ventures like in China, Taiwan, Turkey, Thailand, and Russia.

It is the only company which started the process of large scale manufacturing of cars along with management of large-scale workforce using engineered manufacturing skills which later known as Fordism. 

Company deals in:

Products

Automobiles

Heavy vehicles

Tractor trollies

Services

Motor sport (stock car racing, formula one, rally, sports car)

Financial services

Analysis of TQM in Ford Motors

The form adopted the theory of TQM in the year 1980 when its slogan was related to quality. They have started TQM through a joint venture based on customer satisfaction and quality driven methodology (Ford Car Reviews, Specs, 2016).

Through the partnership with Chemfil Ford planned to produce quality driven products with a favorable environment for the workforce and with profitability. Keeping in mind customer satisfaction and quality product delivery their painting designs were done through Chemfil along with the workforce of

Ford (Bayou & de Korvin, 2008).

Twenty years before, when immersion of Japanese products influenced the US automative industry, the Ford  considered a transformation based on the management philosophy given by one of the famous philosophers.

The end result of this movement was known as TQM. After suffering up to $3.1 billion in loss , Ford introduced a range of new segments, including the new type of car segment, and by 1986 the Ford became biggest earner among American auto company (Ford Vehicles, 2016). It tried to use all possible applications of TQM to ensure the best quality delivery of their products. 

Ford motors have also adopted one of the techniques in which they use CT scans to identify acceptable parts before assembling them. By implementing this technique they got help in checking the internal structural deficiencies of the parts which lead to quality delivery. If their suppliers have changed anything in the parts then the “forensic investigators” scans the same throughout CT scanners and get to know if that change is affecting the quality positively or negatively. The scanner is capable of detecting particles up to 17 microns this means that defects which are not visible through naked eyes can be easily detected by the scanner and can be rectified by workers. The reason for implementing this procedure is to identify the problem before it turns a customer reported the issue (Adamson, 2005). 

The advantage of TQM is to identify and rectify the problem in order to achieve productivity and profitability. TQM addresses problematic areas such as mistakes in work, duplicate efforts and unnecessary methods. 

TQM Helped Ford Motors in Reducing the Cost by:

 Eliminating non-confirmed and dual work

 Eliminating rejected products

 Elimination of reworking and repairing done

 Reducing the cost of warranty and support are given to the customer

 Improving efficiency which leads to increased profit per product

 Increasing production by extending the types of products (Chopra & Garg, 2011)

TQM Tools Used

There are total seven tools which can be applied in TQM

Histogram

Control charts

Stratification

Cause and effect diagram

Scatter diagram

Pareto chart

Check sheet

From the above seven tools, Ford can use below three tools to improve the quality of the end products.

Cause and effect diagram- it is a problem-solving tool which is used by different functional teams to identify the problem's root cause.

Ford can use this tool for finding out the root cause for defects in radiators. It is the most important part of the car as it not only has cooling effect but it also coordinates well with other parts and if it starts malfunctioning then it can lead to failure of other systems. Ford has introduced the concept of CT scan due to which they can identify the minor rejection in radiators way they are improving their quality (Chopra & Garg, 2012).Ford motors have also adopted one of the techniques in which they use CT scans to identify acceptable parts before assembling them. Through with this CT scan, they get help in checking the internal structural deficiencies of the parts and by this way, they get to deliver the quality product. If their suppliers have changed anything in the parts then the “forensic investigators” scans the same throughout CT scanners and get to know if that change is affecting the quality positively or negatively. The scanner is capable of detecting particles up to 17 microns this means that defects which are not visible through naked eyes can be easily detected through the scanner and can be rectified by workers(Schiffauerova & Thomson, 2006). The reason for implementing this procedure is to identify the problem before it becomes a customer reported issue

Checksheet- It is a simple checklist used to collect data in qualitative or quantitative terms and  is basically used to identify the rejected parts and calculates the total cost incurred by the company.

In order to minimize the cost to company Ford can use this tool to identify the rejected part and provide a solution by replacing the same.

The other way they can use this tool is by improving the quality of paint done on the car doors. There is one team who is specialized  in this area whose objective is to improve the painting defects on the car doors. For this, they need to first collect the data which will determine the number and location of paint defects (Curry & Kadasah, 2002).

Pareto Chart- This Tool Consists of two Steps :

Performance analysis of warranty- Rejections which are included in warranty effects the most to the profitability of the company, so we can use this as the basic source for data collection. This is possible through Pareto chart. The team should compare both the costs by adopting this tool.

Analyzing actual field performance -parts which are replaced under warranty are owned by the company. If a company wants the money back for the rejected part then it has to return the same to the vendor and vendor must make it readily available. By  this analysis we can identify the failure parts which are divided into hard failure under which part stops functioning and the second one is soft failure under which product functioning degrades. By doing this the team will make the necessary changes in the design and model in order to ensure the quality. They also make a note of the several other factors like noise factors , control factors, after this, the range of these variables are being defined.

House of Quality 

It is a tool through which a company identifies customer’s wants. Assuming I being one of the customers of the company Ford would want one of the best cars. By using HOQ Ford can go for benchmarking the process. There are two forms, first one is customer competitive assessment in which the customer analyze the key features of the product by comparing it with other competitors available in the market sometimes they also do prior market research.

The second one is engineering competitive assessment it includes some qualitative tests which are conducted in order to deliver the best possible product (Karaszewski, 2004). By including both the phases in HOQ helps to identify the problem minutely and second benefit is to compare the discrepancies with the other segments introduced by competitors. As a customer I assumed that BMW runs faster as compared to Citroen but the fact is opposite as per company the features introduced in Citroen is much better as compared to BMW.

 In order to provide the customized service to the customer using HOQ Ford has focused on process designing faced many challenges like; current automotive vehicles need plenty of the stamped sheet metal parts for the construction purpose (Mann, 2008). Understanding this dynamic process of transferring metal sheets from one die station to another becomes an important task in the design phase.
Solution to this problem is-

Ford selected Altair Product Design to assist them in this process. The newly developed Altair Hyper Die Dynamics (HDD) was implemented by Ford. By introducing these workers easily transferred metals sheets from one station to other understand the complex nature of the processing company created a model in which there is only one press station is available which includes assembling of several parts at one place. This way they were able to reduce their cost which incurred in transferring the metal sheets. They also implemented customized software to form newly designed prosses flow.

Now engineers could easily predict transfer behavior of panels faster and accurately (Ford & Bhargav, 2006).

This was one of the major transformations in the Ford Company to fulfill customer wants as per their requirements and also get over their competitors.

Project Management

Hired as the project manager of the company for the task of, successfully launching the CT scan methodology.

Ford motors have also adopted one of the techniques in which they use CT scans to identify acceptable parts before assembling them. Through with this CT scan, they get help in checking the internal structural deficiencies of the parts and by this way, they get to deliver the quality product. If their suppliers have changed anything in the parts then the “forensic investigators” scans the same throughout CT scanners and get to know if that change is affecting the quality positively or negatively. The scanner is capable of detecting particles up to 17 microns this means that defects which are not visible through naked eyes can be easily detected through the scanner and can be rectified by workers(Schiffauerova & Thomson, 2006). The reason for implementing this procedure is to identify the problem before it becomes a customer reported issue.

WBS Includes Below Parameters:

Tasks- The task is to successfully implement the CT scan process and make it simpler for all the employees working so that they can easily adopt.

Cost- cost analysis has to be done for this new project by analyzing whether the cost to the company is reducing or it is increasing. After doing the deep analysis the profitability of the company will increase as rejections will decrease along with the customer satisfaction. Employees will now be able to easily detect the problem and rectify the same then and there before it becomes a major reason for customer dissatisfaction(Ginn & Zairi, 2005).

Schedule- proper deadline to complete the task must be defined.

Scope- scope of implementing this project is vast as it will only increase the sales of the company. 

WBS Time Frames 

 

PERT Chart

References

Adamson, I. (2005). Knowledge management – The next generation of TQM?. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 16(8-9), 987-1000.

All Vehicles | View All Ford Car, Truck, SUV, Hybrid, & Crossover Models | Ford Vehicles. (2016).Ford.com. Retrieved 23 September 2016, from http://www.ford.com/vehicles/

Bayou, M. & de Korvin, A. (2008). Measuring the leanness of manufacturing systems—A case study of Ford Motor Company and General Motors. Journal Of Engineering And Technology Management,25(4), 287-304.

Chopra, A. & Garg, D. (2011). Behavior patterns of quality cost categories. The TQM Journal, 23(5), 510-515.

Chopra, A. & Garg, D. (2012). Introducing models for implementing cost of quality system. The TQM Journal, 24(6), 498-504.

Curry, A. & Kadasah, N. (2002). Focusing on key elements of TQM – evaluation for sustainability. The TQM Magazine, 14(4), 207-216.

Ford Cars: 2016 Ford Prices, Reviews, Specs. (2016). Autoguide.com. Retrieved 23 September 2016, from http://www.autoguide.com/new-cars/ford/

Ford, D. & Bhargav, S. (2006). Project management quality and the value of flexible strategies.Engineering, Construction And Architectural Management, 13(3), 275-289. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09699980610669697

Ginn, D. & Zairi, M. (2005). Best practice QFD application: an internal/external benchmarking approach based on Ford Motors' experience. Int J Qual & Reliability Mgmt, 22(1), 38-58.

Karaszewski, R. (2004). Evaluation of the external transfer of quality management systems of the world's largest corporations. The TQM Magazine, 16(6), 418-425.

Mann, R. (2008). Revisiting a TQM research project: The quality improvement activities of TQM. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 19(7-8), 751-761.

Schiffauerova, A. & Thomson, V. (2006). Managing cost of quality: insight into industry practice. The TQM Magazine, 18(5), 542-550.

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