Improvement The Painting Process Of Ride Control Systems With Six Sigma Quality Tools

Tenneco (Beijing) Automotive Ride Control Co.,ltd is one internationalautomotive components company of the first generation who invested in China marketand set up the factory locally. The vision of Tenneco is: lead the world wide talent,create safer, quieter, cleaner diving way. Tenneco make every effort to satisfy andexceed the customer’s expectation and to be the customer first choice, and become theglobal and leading ride control systems supplier with the value of driven by thetechnology, create the value for customer.The company came from Beijing Automotive Ride Control Factory which isstate owned and set up in 1978. After the stake holder reformation in 1995, thecompany still keep the most of employees, equipment and old process. Therefore,there is still big improvement space in process and quality area. Based on that, weimprovement team focus on the customer’s complaints, take use of the six Sigma tooland method, find out the key factor of decreasing the customer’s satisfactory, definethe quality issue and work out the solution to improve the better process stability.In this paper, we have introduced the six Sigma method, principles and theapplication steps. Six Sigma actually is a kind of management philosophy ormanagement method. With Six Sigma tools, we actually can realize of increasing thecustomer’s satisfactory. Define and analyze the defection items with data collection,focus on the process improvement, eliminate or solve the process factors whichinfluence the quality in line with DMAIC steps.Based on the data of customer complaints, the improvement team takes use ofthe Six Sigma tools and select that improvement of painting process as our project.The team use the fish bones to analyze each factor of man, machine, material, method,environmental and measures of the painting lines process; Find out the processdefection, specifically define the improvement action plans and implement theimprovement action plans; Summarize the result of project improvement.Six Sigma management can be used for improve the company’s performance, butalso plays the important role of improve the company’s management level. In thetheory, the concept of quality is not only the final scrap rate at the end, but also needto be considered among the whole process to find out each factor which can influencethe quality result. Then to eliminate these defected factors to establish better qualityprocess by optimize or improve the process.Usually, Six Sigma management model is a kind of from top to down way andinitiated by the top management team. It is a more like a kind of company’s cultureand driven by the top management team. The top management team provide orsupport the resources, set up the improvement team to implement the improvementactivities. Now more and more companies lead this kind of Six Sigma into thecompany as continuous improvement.In our company the main process is mechanic, welding, assembly and painting.We selected painting process as our improvement project. In fact, painting is morechemical industry, each factor of environmental, material and method in each process can be the factors which influence the final product quality. After we use Six Sigmatools to improve the painting process with DMAIC steps, we gain big progress anvery good number of financial improvement.On the production line , we manufacturing usually adopt the scrap rate as theindicators to evaluate the quality result. Actually this indicators always cover the truecost and the true waste during the manufacturing process including the material waste,human resource waste, the plant facilities waste and resources waste. i.e. the scrap ratecan not truly show up the true cost or true waste during the whole process.Only if use the Six Sigma tools, define and find out the defection with datacollection, we are able to find out the waste and hidden cost as possible as we can,then we are able to improve the management level , define and control the defection.In this improvement project, the team finally gain the financial improvement ofseventeen million three hundred thousand RMB.