How can Weilai do a good job in safety and quality while recalling and winning prizes？
Since Tesla spontaneously ignited in the basement in early 2019, pure electric vehicles have been under a spell, and many spontaneous combustion incidents have occurred one after another. Since then, the safety of new energy vehicles has been pushed to the center of the storm, and a ruthless fire has been set up together, which has extinguished consumers’ enthusiasm for new energy vehicles, making the market cold.
After incomplete statistics, since 2019, according to domestic and foreign media reports, there have been more than 40 safety accidents of electric vehicles related to power batteries, including Weilai, a new car-making company known as "China Tesla". Because of frequent spontaneous combustion, Weilai has recalled 4,803 ES8s to prevent the fire from happening again.
(Weilai ES8)
Just as consumers labeled Weilai as "unsafe", on July 31st, J.D.Power, a consumer insight and market research institution, released the 2019 China New Energy Vehicle Experience Research Report for the first time, and the research results showed that Weilai automobile quality surpassed BMW and ranked first. This empirical study focuses on the quality problems encountered by new owners of new energy vehicles with a service life of 2 to 6 months. The new car quality score is expressed by the average number of problems per 100 vehicles (PP100). The lower the score, the better the quality. This study focuses on the complete experience and satisfaction of users in the process of pre-sales, sales and product use.
"Spontaneous combustion" and "safety and quality rank first" two irreconcilable words appeared together in Weilai, and this new car-making power head enterprise seems to have found a way to prove itself.
Standing at the gate of No.9766 Susong Road, Shushan Economic and Technological Development Zone, Hefei City, Anhui Province, this is the location of Jianghuai Weilai Automobile Factory and the last line of defense for Weilai Automobile to control quality and safety.
Walking into the factory, Shen Feng, Vice President of Weilai Quality and Chairman of Quality Management Committee, dressed in light blue overalls, is waiting for the arrival of everyone. The "veteran" of the automobile industry who once worked as a 6-Sigma black belt master in Ford Motor Company, as the global CTO of Polestar and the president of China, and as the president of Volvo China R&D Company, is now in charge of the overall management of Weilai quality.
(Shen Feng, Vice President of Weilai Quality and Chairman of Quality Management Committee)
Under the leadership of Shen Feng, "quality is faith" has become the motto of Weilai quality and safety team.
The recall is indeed "unfortunate", so we should grasp the problem from the source of design.
When talking about the spontaneous combustion accident of electric vehicles and the recall of Weilai ES8, the main person in charge did not seem to shy away.
Shen Feng said that there have been many spontaneous combustion incidents in new energy vehicles recently, including Weilai. The recall incident was a little special. At that time, it was unlucky to communicate with relevant government departments for many times. However, this start-up car company seems to have set an industry record. It took less than one month for nearly 5,000 cars to be recalled and re-delivered. This is a very difficult thing.
At that time, after the recall incident, public opinion was polarized. One kind of consumers agreed that the recall gave Weilai more opportunities, while more consumers criticized this young enterprise, believing that it was on the verge of "stall" or would roll over. However, the quality and safety system that Weilai is building seems to give this company a barrier that is "rapidly driving".
Shen Feng believes that to solve the quality problem, we should start from the source of design. He believes that only by controlling the quality of early design and strengthening the early identification and prevention of risks can the safety and robustness of products be fully guaranteed. As a result, FMEA Committee (covering CFMEA, DFMEA and PFMEA) and Safety Committee (covering seven safety fields: function, machinery, collision, battery, network, high voltage and chemistry) came into being, and were responsible for overall control of product design quality.
As a set of safety system, FEMA runs through all aspects of Weilai product development, manufacturing and cooperation. In each link, there is also a set of strict testing procedures that need to be followed. For example, DOE-experimental design; APQP-advance planning of product quality in supply chain; PPAP-approval procedure for production parts; Sip-standard inspection procedure for manufacturing links; Dts-size technical specifications and so on.
In Shen Feng’s view, as a mass-produced industrial product, automobiles need many parts. If you want to have both quality and quantity, you can only do it by forming a system.
In supplier selection, according to Ma Ying, senior director of quality management of Weilai Partners, the professional team established by Weilai has been involved in the supplier system since the beginning of product design, and Weilai’s quality team will directly participate in the supplier product quality pre-planning process.
(Ma Ying, Senior Director of Quality Management of Weilai Partner)
At the same time, Weilai established the first supplier quality certification system "NIO Quality Premium Partner" of New Energy Automobile Company, and further strengthened the control of quality and safety sources on the basis of full performance monitoring.
For the safety and quality of products, being "stubborn" may be the only way out for Weilai.
Do a good job in service quality and target user enterprises.
Doing a good job in product quality is only a small step into the automobile market, and how to do a good job in consumer service is also the touchstone to test the quality standards of enterprises.
Shen Feng stated that quality is not only the work to be done by the quality department, but also the work to be done by all staff of Weilai. To do a good job in building a car, in the user’s view, focus on products and services, which gives employees the same mission as Weilai’s vision of "quality is faith" As a user enterprise, "customer first" is not just talk. If you become a customer of Weilai, you will definitely experience the difference of this China brand.
In NIO HOUSE Weilai Center in Oriental Plaza, No.1 East Chang ‘an Avenue, Beijing, after asking several car owners, everyone was satisfied with Weilai’s after-sales service, helping parents to help their children with their homework and to arrive at the scene to assist in handling the accident as soon as possible after a vehicle collision, which really reflected Weilai’s determination to do a good job in after-sales service.
Behind the high satisfaction of users, technology is also helping Weilai to improve service quality. As a consumer, it usually takes more than one month to get feedback from the dealer to the relevant departments of the manufacturer in the traditional OEM when there are problems in the automobile products that need to be solved. However, in today’s increasingly advanced technology, Weilai has developed a Debug system, and the feedback from the owner can go directly to the manufacturer, and the time is shortened to seconds, and the efficiency of solving problems has been rapidly improved.
"How fast is this speed? For example, if you find abnormal noise in the seat, you can directly say’ I want feedback’ to NOMI. When NOMI said’ I know’, Weilai backstage staff had already received feedback. In addition, Weilai basically replies to users within 12 hours. Therefore, we can not only receive problems quickly, but also solve them quickly, "Shen Feng said proudly.
According to Yao Wei, quality director of Weilai’s mass production products, Weilai has collected more than 70,000 suggestions and feedbacks since the Debug system was put into operation. Apart from product complaints or vehicle quality problems, a large part of them are users’ suggestions on the product’s room for improvement.
For example, not long ago, a car owner said that children often fiddled with the buttons on the car, which led to the high and low air volume of the air conditioner, so he put forward the suggestion of locking the air conditioner for children. After receiving the feedback, Yao Wei’s team updated the air conditioning lock function on the 2.0 version of the in-vehicle system through communication and response.
The word "quality and safety" may be deeply rooted in the hearts of the people in NIO HOUSE and even the whole factory in Jianghuai Weilai Manufacturing Factory. How can Weilai do a good job in quality and safety? The whole staff of this enterprise seems to be slowly giving the answer.
(This article comes from Geshi Auto Network)