ABSTRACT
The company studied was a rst-tier automotive supplier operating in Ohio and Indiana, USA. The company employed 650 people working in three shifts at three production plants. Each of the three plants had full maintenance, engineering, and nance staff. One plant produced raw material and two plants produced parts from the material. The company produced berglass sheet molding compound (SMC) exterior parts for Ford and General Motors. The parts were produced using injection molding and included fenders, truck lids, hood lids, and other exterior trim (over 2,500,000 parts per year between the two production plants). At the time of the study a major quality defect called “bubbling” was appearing on the outside of the parts, apparently random in terms of which parts and location. The bubbling defects were cause for rejection by Ford and GM and the parts could not be reworked. The purposes of the study were to identify the cause and eliminate the bubbling defects while streamlining and standardizing the production processes.
