Next U.S. Quality Challenge - Higher Quality with Less Data Collection Patrick Hammett, Ph.D. A major transition in the automotive industry involves a fundamental shift in who defines quality.
Most companies now rely on their customers to determine their quality requirements.
These in-process customers utilize the outputs from prior processes or suppliers. Recently, these customers have been placing ever-increasing demands for more information from their suppliers. In response, both internal and external suppliers are increasing their resources for additional data collectors, automated measurement equipment, computer software, and other items to generate quality information. Benchmarking visits to both Japanese and North American automotive manufacturers reveal a wide spectrum in the use of internal quality resources. On one end, most Japanese companies utilize relatively few resources to generate internal quality information.