| General Motors Powertrain manufactures and designs engines for General Motors vehicles. The Tonawanda engine plant facility produces 4, 5, 6, and 8 cylinder engines for Mercury Cruiser, GMC, Chevy, Hummer, Buick, and Cadillac. The facility consists of a cylinder head, engine block, and crank shaft machine floors. Along with the machine floors, the facility performs cylinder head, block, and engine assemblies for all of the above engine types. Part tracking and automated process control is a key to General Motors achieving "The World's Best Powertrain". The biggest quality issue for General Motors cylinder head machining is pressing seats and guides into a cylinder head no matter what engine type. Currently, there is no traceability through the seat and guide machines along with data analysis because depth and force data is not retained for an appropriate amount of time. The only test that would be able to detect this type of defect at the engine assembly line would be engine assembly cold test. Testing an engine at a low RPM with natural gas is defined as a cold test. The failure modes for cylinder heads with high seats or guides are for NVH meaning noise. Internal quality metrics have shown that all GM engine plant manufacturing process only has a 5% ability to detect this defect once it happens in its process. There has been many engine pulls at the vehicle assembly plant due to high seats or guides which results in an engine miss fire. Once the engine(s) leave the engine facility, the vehicle assembly plant may catch the defect at DVT (Dynamic Vehicle Test). If the defect is not found at DVT then the defect would be passed onto the customer, where it would then result in a walk home and potential lost customer. |
