General Motors: Quality Improvement

Managing quality is significant for any size companies. The quality of their products helps to sustain the loyalty and satisfaction of the consumer. It will decrease the risk and expense of reconstructing defective goods. A company has the chance to develop a reputation for quality by earning accreditation with a distinguished quality standard, such as "ISO 9001, distributed by the International Organization for Standardization".

General Motors is an organization that has recently launched a quality improvement initiative.

General Motors (GM) is currently winding up its two-year quality improvement initiative. This initiative is a reasonably broad initiative, which has a focus on three essential areas. They are quality, customer experience, and product improvement. GM is a favorite organization that primarily produces products. They also extend services to their clients who would be a subsidiary procurement of theirs. This initiative is anticipated not just to solve their smeared reputation after a mortifying bankruptcy, but also lead them to the top of the automaker industry.

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General Motors have less primary quality problems with their vehicle than those built by Toyota, Honda, and Ford. They have set new quality benchmarks for its stamping, powertrain and assembly plants. They developed a strategic sourcing initiative to improve collaboration with the greatest suppliers on intricate elements, affecting up to 60 systems across seven architectures and 20 powertrains. GM started certifying new engineering and manufacturing methods prior to guaranteeing a glitch-free vehicle launches. (wardsauto) "GM was the top-ranked automaker overall, with two brands, GMC and Chevrolet in the top five, and all four of its brands, including Cadillac and Buick, scoring above the industry average".

(forbes)

According to J.D. Power & Associates, GM in the past couple of years has ranked amongst the industry leaders in initial-quality. "With so much advanced technology in today's cars, its no surprise that about 22 percent of the problems were related to the vehicle's entertainment, communications or navigation system". (forbes) They made a claim that their warranty claims and associated costs have dropped 50% in the past five years. They made a decision to focus on vehicle features such as ride and handling, steering, and braking, as well as overall quality and safety performance. (Fox)

GM take another step forward and "implemented the latest engineering tools and validation processes to ensure long-term reliability and durability because more buyers today want to own their vehicles a couple years longer than the warranty might cover." "GM won the top quality award in eight of 23 vehicle segments and had 15 models rank in the top three within their segments". (forbes) General Motors has been working on their quality issues for years, however last year they increased its works by placing Boler-Davis in charge of their product quality and customer experience. Producing an outstanding customer service is no longer an added benefit to the industry, which became a requirement. A consumer who is not content with the way they are treated can quickly take their business to competition. Excellent service is achieved by positive interaction through adequate communication and relationship building.

General motors are applying scientific approaches to interpret consumer feedback into technical specifications for each of its vehicles. For example, "drivability" has always been highly subjective. "But now GM is using a measuring tool called AVL Drive that provides engineers with a numerical assessment of the driving characteristics of GM vehicles". (forbes) This allows them to specifically benchmark the competition." 66 percent of automotive, along with manufacturing and industrial, is the leading manufacturing group in terms of “providing a superior customer experience through a well-developed and designed enterprise data analytics effort.” (forbes) GM’s customer retention averages between 52% and 53%, trailing industry-leader Toyota at 58%. “We don’t want to be just the best. We want to go beyond that,” Boler-Davis says."

Outstanding customer service will bring an astonishing result; whether you deliver a fabulous or inferior customer service the consumers will tell others about their experience. "To improve the customer experience, GM has undertaken the most aggressive dealer-renovation project in its history, with 88% of its stores either having completed or in the middle of upgrades." “We’re no longer waiting for people to come to us; we’re reaching out to them,” says Boler-Davis, who leads a global staff of nearly 3,000 workers”. "The automaker says its warranty claims and related costs have dropped 50% in the past five years. But consumer perception continues to trail reality." Product development strategy is defined as; developing new products or modifying existing products so they appear new and offering those products to current or new markets.

GM uses product development as its corporate strategy by managing a comprehensive portfolio of vehicles so that they are placed to meet global consumer preferences. They analyze their design, engineering and marketing resources on several brands and architectures. They increase the number of vehicles built from a simple global architecture to more than 50% of the total volumes in 2015 and less than 17% today. They anticipate that this initiative will produce in larger expenditure per design and brand and will improve product development and production adaptability.