QUALITY – IT’S EVERYONE’S JOB
Our new mindset makes us our customers’ champions
This year marks the start of an important shift in the way we work as One Team to ensure that quality is front and center when it comes to delivering for our customers.
In this issue of On the Ground we take a closer look at what that means and how it is already being integrated into everything we do.
Sharing best practices across our teams and even more collaborative working is an important step in improving quality. One example of this is from our Case IH Racine Plant, in Wisconsin, North America. They shared best practices around driveline air-leak testing and leak detection. These detectors monitor a system that contains liquids, gasses, or other substances to ensure there are no leaks.
By developing in-house process controls and investing in enhanced testing they recorded a 66% reduction in the number of defects identified by dealers receiving our machines. Dealer satisfaction with the quality of our machines went up by 27%.
Dealer satisfaction with the quality of our machines went up by
Joe Miller
Joe Miller is the Global Product and Portfolio Lead for large and compact tractors. He works across our sites in North America. He says the key to these improvements has been innovating and optimizing processes and working as One Team.
“Product management, manufacturing and the platform engineering team come together daily. One of the biggest things I’ve noticed is that we’re getting real time feedback now from our customers within the first couple of days, weeks and months of service and sharing that feedback on a global platform level. With quality, everyone needs a seat at the table. It’s not just one area it’s the whole chain. We’ve also gone from an experience-based manufacturing system to a process based one. This means that the process controls are building in quality from day one. The feedback from our dealers has been positive and they’re seeing major changes in our new products.”
Case IH Magnum™
New Holland GENESIS® T8
While we are developing similar processes across our plants, we are also placing machines in the field with selected customers to test and collect feedback to help make our new products better.
Andrew Tawse who is based at our plant in Basildon, UK
Andrew Tawse, EMEA Customer Experience Manager says they are focusing on the outcomes that have the biggest impact on customers and the way they perceive our iconic brands.
“We’ve been working on how we can contribute to delivering, not just the features and quality that our customers expect of our tractors, but preventing the breakdowns and interruptions to give them the uptime they need to get the job done. We’re working tightly with Platform and Product Development teams, and in addition to the usual testing and validation activities when developing a new model. We have made prototype and pre-series tractors available to selected customers and supported them to use these test machines on their farms carrying out their normal operations. And to really stretch our machines and to get the best feedback, we work with our Commercial and Product Management colleagues to select those customers we know will push tractors to their full potential.”
So how does this lead to better uptime for our customers?
By running these prototype and pre-series machines, all the issues we discover, comments our customers make and opportunities to improve are fed back in real time to the Manufacturing Plants and Product Development teams. They then have an opportunity to fix the problems ahead of full production, protecting our customers from breakdowns.
“We have also been using the amazing in-depth technical knowledge and experience we have in our Dealer Support and Technical Training teams, who are helping our dealers and customers every day, by bringing them into the Product Development cycle supporting design reviews, workshops, and customer clinics.
Working in this way, we capitalize on their collective experiences of where our products have had problems in the past, and make sure we have solutions in place in time for the next launch or model upgrade”, Andrew added.
The Customer Validation and Fleet Monitoring initiatives in EMEA are not only delivering on Customer and Quality, but supporting our core beliefs One Team, Customer First and Be The Best.
Pre-series Farmall C AD2 being tested by a customer in Germany
Pre-series STEYR Plus 4100 being put through its paces by a customer in Austria
Members of our Product Support, Sales, Customer Insights, Quality and Customer Experience teams with a New Holland T4F.
Left to right: Giovanni Trezzi, Silvio Santori (from New Holland dealer Andriulo Officine, Italy), Irenee Guillarme, Nicolas Preau, Arnaud Andrieu, Tom Vindevoghel and Moritz Ramsch
