[Limited Capacity] Workshop Automotive: “Quality Management in Automotive – Lessons Learned on Overcoming Quality Challenges in China”

Quality Management is one of the major topics in the automotive industry. All visions of autonomous driving or E-Mobility are not very helpful if the automobile is of inferior quality.

In today’s automobile industry, development of new cars has to be faster and cheaper, while the complexity of the systems and the demand in quality from the end customer increases. In earlier times, a new model could take 3 to 5 years from developing first prototypes until serial production, today 2 years seems to be already too long time. Nowadays cars are more like rolling computers and autonomous driving brings the car systems from supporting the driver into the driver’s seat itself, while the driver becomes more a supporter until he/she will be completely replaced by car systems. In the past, design issues or part failures could be handled before customers got aware of it, but today information flow in the internet is so fast that any issue will go viral immediately and car brands are immediately in the news.

Due to these changes, warranty costs are getting higher and the loss of reputation is instant – you lose reputation much faster than you gained it. Therefore, quality becomes more and more important. Many companies already defined 2017 as the year of quality

Mr. Thomas Roesler of Formel D has been involved in several product APQPs and as a consultant now also in Vehicle APQP. He will share his experiences of working with production in China since 1999 and explain how you can avoid problems from the early beginning of prototyping until SOP. He will discuss with you some lessons learned for the production in China, although they are valid all over the world. How can you make the turn from reactive quality to preventive quality? How can the product be still affordable if quality is so high?

Mr. Ralf Boehm of Webasto Roof & Components is deeply involved in improving quality standards and processes within their organization, with focuses on quality planning, warranty management and product safety. Since especially the Chinese market with its growth and extreme conditions is challenging in these areas, the assurance of lessons learned with China as reference market is most important.He will give an insight in the above mentioned fields of quality management, with specific requirements and experiences in China. The target is an open exchange of knowledge and opinions about how to overcome the quality challenges in China for the automotive suppliers.

Presentation 1: “Quality assurance from prototyping to production line"
Thomas Roesler | Director Manufacturing Asia Pacific, Shanghai Formel D Technology and Engineering Co. Ltd.

Presentation 2: “Quality management with focus on product safety and lessons learned”
Mr. Ralf Boehm | Quality Director, Webasto Roof & Components China