 Goodyear
Tire Co. Pumps Up its Supplier Quality Process
EMNS’s Global Supplier Quality
Assurance
The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. is the world’s largest
tire manufacturer. With 96 plants in 28 countries and approximately
100,000 employees, the company makes every effort to live
up to its slogan, “More people ride on Goodyear tires
than on any other kind.” Because it’s such an
expansive company, a solid supplier quality-management program
is essential in keeping the automotive supply chain running
smoothly.
Goodyear relies on the service of Global Supplier Quality
Assurance—a quality management service provided by
Electronic Media Networked Services—to maintain its
raw material quality improvement program. After experiencing
success at 80 of its manufacturing facilities, Goodyear
has renewed its five-year contract with EMNS to keep using
GSQA.
“Our company is a major factor in the automotive
supply chain,” says Don Stanley, Goodyear’s
vice president of product quality and plant technology.
“GSQA helps simplify our compliance efforts and improve
product and supplier performance.” Goodyear has chosen
GSQA to collect, store and analyze supplier-entered quality
data associated with each shipment received from Goodyear’s
direct material suppliers. The system also supports the
tiremaker’s lean manufacturing and quality initiatives
by providing strategic supplier quality performance data
to its plants, engineering organizations and corporate quality
and purchasing groups.
With GSQA, suppliers enter certificate of analysis, advance
shipment and certificate of origin data into GSQA for each
shipment, using electronic data interchange or a Web browser.
GSQA then collects, stores and analyzes the information,
providing reports to quality assurance, production, purchasing
and engineering departments. QSQA facilitates collaboration
in ongoing supplier-focused corrective action requests,
corrective action plans and supplier audits. It also simplifies
material specification changes and provides automatic alerts
for a variety of supplier-focused material quality events.
Over time, the manufacturer gains an accurate understanding
of incoming raw-material quality and supplier performance
by material and by plant, as well as how the supplier complies
with the manufacturer’s quality programs.
One benefit of using GSQA is reduced material quality
assurance costs. Before a shipment can leave a supplier,
the supplier must enter the material’s certificate
of analysis data into GSQA. This allows GSQA to build a
knowledge base of how each supplier’s materials comply
with specifications. This feature simplifies Goodyear’s
incoming quality assurance in two ways: First, SPC checks
are performed when the material arrives, identifying shipments
that may need to be followed and/or tested during processing
due to excess variability. Second, as the knowledge base
grows, Goodyear builds statistical confidence with its suppliers
and their ability to consistently provide materials within
specification and with minimal variation in quality.
Goodyear is also pleased with simplified record keeping
since implementing GSQA. The system tracks supplier-focused
material quality and process information and provides enterprisewide
access to this information, including certificate of analysis
data, individual shipment information, supplier self-audits
to Goodyear’s standards, supplier corrective action
request documentation, NAFTA certificate of origin and supplier
contact information. This saves Goodyear time and resources
in ongoing ISO standards compliance audits, supplier quality
audits, corrective action request administration and overall
supplier communications.
Another improvement has to do with material traceability.
GQSA provides Goodyear a centralized, searchable database
where individual shipment-material quality and corrective
action records are kept for all manufacturing plants. This
allows Goodyear to simplify problem identification at the
plant level. GSQA enhances Goodyear’s ability to correlate
finished good quality to specific raw-material characteristics.
On a monetary level, GSQA provides Goodyear the ability
to attach a cost to individual corrective action requests.
These costs include production of defective products, downtime,
disposal costs and personnel overtime. GSQA’s corrective
action request cost recover feature allows Goodyear to track
corrective action costs and more quickly recover the costs
from its suppliers.
Goodyear realized an 80-times return on investment across
80 of its 96 facilities utilizing GSQA. Goodyear continues
to realize significant process benefits from the implementation
of GSQA into their raw material quality improvement program.
EMNS’s Global Supplier Quality Assurance
- Reduced incoming testing
- Simplified record keeping
- Improved material traceability
www.gsqa.com
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