The Benefits of Combining Digitalization with Quality Tools: Application in the Field of Wiring Systems Manufacturing for the Automotive Industry

Abstract

In an economic context of increasing pressure, manufacturing companies acting in the automotive field are struggling to maintain their margins and market share. To maintain consistently high-quality products at low cost, it’s increasingly crucial to remain competitive. The automation of production systems has emerged as an answer to competitiveness in this age of accelerated industrial expansion within the 4.0 era. In this context, is anchored the main objective of this paper: The benefits of combining digitalization with quality tools: application in the field of wiring systems manufacturing for the automotive industry. This combination is used for the first time in the wiring systems manufacturing in the automotive field. The novelty of this research is the proposal of a new methodical framework which we will call “CRAFTER” using seven steps including the reverse failure mode and effect analysis (reverse-FMEA) in addition to several traditional quality tools, and combining this new methodology with the Digitalization. This approach contributes, in our case of study, to increasing competitiveness through the improvement of the plant cost rate by 7%, reducing non-quality costs by 30%, and improving the quality of products and services. This particular contribution in our activity area can be applied to all companies with manual manufacturing processes.