Thanks to an eagle-eyed colleague, last week Solihull's FA2 Line 8 team captured and immediately rectified a quality escape, protecting our customers in the spirit of Solihull's War on DFV.
Donna Southall works on the transit bag process in Solihull's FA2 Line 8.
She produces and adds the transit bags to the boot of Jaguar F-PACE and Range Rover Velar vehicles just before they drive off the line for final quality checks. But last week she spotted something which didn’t appear quite right.
The transit bag is made up of various items such as wheel cap covers, first aid kits and other optional extras which are added to the vehicle on arrival at our retailers.
Cigarette lighters, although more uncommon, are still available to customers as an optional extra, and are normally found in our China and Rest of World Markets. Donna adds these cigarette lighters to the transit bag but last week noticed a difference in parts.
Brad Harber, Line 8 Production Leader explained, “We were alerted to a parts change to the cigarette lighter, but something didn’t quite add up. Donna noticed that the new parts weren’t compatible and for some reason the parts were the wrong size for the holder.”
After speaking to the Supplier Parts Quality (SPQ) team, it was found that there was a misalignment with a change to the cigarette lighter holder and the new cigarette lighter insert.
Donna continued, “I process hundreds of transit bags per shift and you quickly notice if anything's changed. Caring about quality is all of our jobs and you can’t just let something go by.”
Both the production and SPQ teams worked together to understand the root cause, solved the problem and in the end, saved a significant stop ship, protecting our customers in the process.
Thanks to Donna’s keen eye for quality, she spotted a quality concern, raised her hand and protected lots of our customers in the process.