Jaguar, one of the world’s leading designers and manufacturers of premium sedans and sports cars, has turned to Six Sigma for improved processes. In an interview with David Brunson, Powertrain Quality & Reliability, Jaguar Cars Limited, the company has already achieved a lot of savings and benefits.
“Engineering Design exerts 70-80% of the influence on customer satisfaction and quality. The tools and techniques used in Design For Six Sigma are very powerful and cross functional. They have the capacity, if used in the right way, to produce really superior end-results in both product and service development. We have found the methods we are using in DFSS can produce continuous improvements in the quality and reliability of our product, which in such a highly complex system as a car, is crucial.”
“Jaguar has made some substantial savings through using Robust Design methods. For instance, we predicted a very critical problem in that we would not be able to cast a particular component using the planned process and design. The analysis tools found this issue 9 months earlier than normal methods. It was a massive cost saving even though only prototypes were being ordered. Not only in the cost saved on prototype parts, but also the savings from not delaying the whole design process. It just made the whole process so much more efficient by
working in a more rigorous way. We can routinely optimise the product and process prior to manufacture, rather than relying on the achievement of quality through inspection, and finding things out too late.”
