You and your budget just spent $900 on airfare, $220 on hotel rooms, $120 on rental cars, $40 on gas, and $70 on meals. $1350!! And it wasn’t even your problem!

What could you do different?

You have to protect your customer and your Company. Call Continental Inc. at 765-778-9999 and let us put a Customer Quality Rep. (CQR) at your customer. We may already have one close to your customer and they can do upfront visits to your customer, not just when there is a problem. They can let you know about an issue before the customer calls you. They will collect accurate data and feed you information in real time. Your customer will be happier and they won’t be charging you with scrap that is not yours or blaming you for something that is not your Company’s issue.

The cost: you will pay for the CQR by not having to fly your people all over the US and Mexico. Take a look at what you spent last year on travel expense to your customer locations with your people and I am sure we can save you money and reputation.

Call us and we can give you a quote. 765-778-9999 x321

From the middle of this unending debris field, Chet decided he had had enough! “We cannot keep going like this,” he said to his managers one day.

Chet knew he never had quality fires like this when he started out years ago. As a young Quality Engineer he “lived” in his customer’s plant and thus really got to know them and their expectations. Being an insider, he was communicating with them on a daily basis. If they had a problem, “BAM,” he was on it!
It suddenly dawned on Chet that things had changed. In his current role, he only visited the customers when there was a major problem. His company no longer had day-to-day representation inside the plants. He had become just a voice on the phone.

The Plan: It was immediately clear what to do. Why not hire Customer Quality Representatives (CQR’s) that live close to his customer locations? These CQR’s would visit the customer facilities regularly and meet the customer face-to-face. They would get to understand the customer’s expectations, check the scrap parts, return parts, and arrange for sorts if needed. The CQR’s would be his company’s eyes and ears at the customer site.

Chet asked Continental to recruit a network of experienced CQR’s and to manage this network. Chet then trained the CQR’s on his products and expectations. Each CQR was assigned to one or two customers that had plants in their home area.

From almost the beginning, things quieted down. Quality “fires” stopped. Chet finally had the time to perform root cause analysis and implement corrective actions, using the data provided by the new CQR’s. Best of all, customer complaints, PPM’s, and warranty dollars all steadily decreased. The cost of the CQR Program actually paid for itself many times over.

Can CQR’s work for your company? Yes. Continental may already have CQR’s in place near your customer’s location. If not, Continental will help you establish and manage your own CQR network. In fact, Chet retired from his former company after 40 plus years of Quality Engineering. Bored with retirement and knowing how much the CQR Process can help Manufacturing Suppliers, he now heads up Continental’s Quality Services Division. Call him for more information on how the CQR Process can help your company.

How expensive is this program?

This process must save you money and pay for itself or you shouldn’t do it. The CQR’s are normally part-time. Some work for more than one supplier, thus spreading the cost among several companies. You pay for only the hours worked. The cost of this program is often cheaper than one trip to your customer.

What happens if I get a Customer Complaint (Formal Customer Quality Alert)?

The CQR will respond to the Customer Complaint immediately. They will investigate to make sure this is a valid CUSTOMER COMPLAINT and challenge it if necessary. If valid, they will take immediate action to correct the situation and ensure only in-spec parts get through to the customer.

What happens if I have bad parts and need a sort?

Your CQR will arrange the sort for you through Continental, if possible, to take advantage of their discounted rates. If the customer requires a specific sort house, the CQR will arrange that and negotiate for discounts. The CQR will keep an eye on the sort to make sure it is being done correctly and that the required data is being properly collected and reported.

What happens if I get a call from a customer about a quality problem?

In most cases, you will never get called as they will call the CQR instead. But if you do receive a call, you simply call the CQR to handle it. They will respond immediately. They will usually be at the plant within an hour or two (sometimes faster). They will handle the situation and report the findings back to you.

What data will I be able to collect from my CQR?

Trip reports will be sent to you and Continental. The CQR will track the issues and put them in common failure modes, so you can focus on your top concerns. Repeat issues or new issues are identified. You will know of all non-conforming parts from all sorts, even those not directly a part of the Customer Complaint paperwork. Types of defects will be reported back to your manufacturing. CQR reports can cover start-ups at your customer locations, an Engineering change, or a supplier change. All data can be put in charts that you can use. You get the data you need.

But a Quality Manager’s life can become totally miserable if he can’t count on his Third Party Sorting and Inspection Firm to come through for him in a crisis when he really needs them, and to do so for a reasonable price.

A bad day for a Quality Manager begins with a call from his customer informing him that Part #ACS-324 is now in Level 2 Containment. The day gets worse when the customer says that his production line will be shut down if he doesn’t get certified, sorted parts within 10 hours! And the day totally collapses when the Quality Manager cannot seem to get anyone to respond to his desperate calls for Sorting help at a reasonable rate. He can only find Sorting firms that demand exorbitant rates that will destroy his budget. It’s like finding smoke and a fire in your home and calling the Fire Station, but all they want to know is how much money you will pay to get them to come over to save your house.

Guide to Being Totally Miserable

Total Misery Guideline #1: No Resources Lined Up
The first guideline to being totally miserable is… Do not have a good quality, reasonably priced Third Party Inspection and Sorting Firm already in your hip pocket. Don’t pre-negotiate rates, leaving you vulnerable to last minute price gouging, and don’t interview a Sorting firm before you have a crisis. Wait until the last minute, when you have no time and are desperate. Don’t get to know a Sorting Company when things are calmer. This is sort of like not seeing a dentist until you have a massive toothache.

Total Misery Guideline #2: No Planning
The second guideline to being totally miserable is…Do not have an escalation plan for a Level 1 or 2 Containment situation (Controlled Shipping Level 1 or 2). Don’t do anything pro-active until disaster hits. In the automotive business it isn’t, “Will I be in containment?” The Quality Manager knows in his heart it is only a matter of, “When will I be in containment?” So for total misery, don’t have an area in your plant set aside designated for containment. Don’t plan and train for how you will perform a Level 1 sort, and don’t have any equipment you may need for a sort ready.

Total Misery Guideline #3: Don’t Learn Your Customer’s Quality
The third guideline to being totally miserable is… Do not understand your customer’s specific Quality Procedures. Don’t ask for these and don’t ever read them.

If you follow these guidelines and get too miserable, you might just quit or end up getting fired.

So why be miserable?

It’s no fun. And it’s really not that hard to call Continental Quality Engineering (CQE) ahead of time. We will be there when you need us, and we offer competitive rates.

Give us a call. 765-778-9999 x321 or simply complete the form below.

Let us help you prepare for that next disaster.

Containments and controlled shipping are very expensive. Not only are you saddled with the cost of sorting your parts, but all administrative and set-up costs as well. Then there is still no guarantee your customer will release you as soon as you have met their requirements. Some parts suppliers have taken a more proactive approach to dealing with their quality issues while keeping costs under control.

By finding a reliable and trusted quality services provider that is willing to perform a “Self-Imposed Containment” at a reasonable cost, some parts suppliers have avoided the disaster of a mandated containment while focusing on their quality issues. The rewards are more time and resources to devote to correcting the issues that cause them grief, and a steady stream of information and data fed back to them for continuous improvement. The time spent in a self-imposed containment is substantially less than a mandated containment, and the costs are lower too.

Dave’s company has been producing components for the “Big Three” for years. They have done very well for themselves by producing good quality products at a reasonable cost. However, as the auto industry evolves into a global marketplace, they are beginning to feel the sting of the cost reductions imposed by their customers. These constraints eventually start to affect the quality of the product. “We just don’t have enough time or resources to shake all the bugs out of a new component launch,” Dave explains. “We know where the issues are, we just have to fix them on the fly.”

Last summer Dave and his staff ran into just this sort of problem. Several components for a new customer vehicle were launched with intense pressure, reduced staff, and tight budget concerns. A rush to production almost always leads to issues of quality, and they had their share on this product line. Before long the customer complaints were steadily piling up on almost every part on the product line. They were staring down the barrel at a costly mandated containment. “It was a nightmare, and we could not wake up!” Quality Engineer Jeff Stone says.

After one component went into a mandated containment program, they decided to put the other components into “Self-Imposed Containment” in an effort to avoid the limited selection of very expensive service providers. Their quality problems were workable, but they needed more time, and they were surely headed for a mandate on the other components.

Dave found a way to reduce some of these headaches. He was able to negotiate a more cost-effective service rate with a smaller Sorting and Inspection Firm that could be more responsive to their needs. The reduced cost allowed them to allocate more resources to their known issues. The service provider’s feedback kept them aware of how Dave and his staff were doing, and the customer complaints nearly disappeared. “They even found a few issues we didn’t know existed,” Dave says. He was able to utilize his Quality Supplier’s engineers to help find and eliminate the root causes of their issues and to put safeguards in place to catch anything that fell through the cracks.