Quality is the cornerstone of enterprise development and the inexhaustible driving force for enterprises to move forward more steadily and further. Amid the huge challenges faced by the automobile market this year, we have found that brands with strong risk resistance have the same characteristic, which is their adherence to high quality standards. Among them, GAC Toyota is one of the leaders. High quality has become synonymous with Toyota, and its reliability and durability have long been recognized by consumers.
In this fifth season of the "GAC Toyota One-day Craftsman Quality Open Day" event, we once again visited the GAC Toyota Nansha factory to explore its excellent quality control system and product quality under the TNGA structure. The secret is to find the quality and craftsmanship put into every car and every component.
High-quality star production line
The third production line we visited can be said to be a "star production line". Its production line's first-time pass rate, that is, the rate of vehicles leaving the factory with a certificate as soon as they leave the assembly line, reaches 99.0%, which is nearly 10 percentage points higher than the industry average; its complete vehicle inspection defective rate is 0.01, that is, every time a complete vehicle is fully inspected, There is only one defective item (referring to appearance defects, including dirt, etc.) out of 100 units. At the same time, GAC Toyota's essence of quality management has also been instilled in its suppliers. In 2019, the defective rate of GAC Toyota's supplier parts was 0.36PPM, that is, only 0.36 defective parts out of 1 million parts. These numbers clearly reflect the high level of quality control.
Quality is created in the process
Only when the methodology is correct can excellent results be achieved in specific execution. There is a popular saying at GAC Toyota: "Quality is created in the process, not inspected." This is exactly Toyota's methodology for quality control. Here we should mention the core of GAC Toyota's quality management - from the completion of the process, which requires ensuring quality within the process. People and machines can judge the quality of the process, find problems and improve them in a timely manner, and prevent defective products from flowing to the next process. While many companies still rely on result management and control quality through inspection, traceability and review afterward, GAC Toyota's quality management system has already "strike first to strengthen", that is, all problems are discovered and solved in the process, and no problems will be solved. Good products are brought to the next step, thereby ensuring overall quality control. Such a methodology is indeed advanced and has very good results in practice.
In order to ensure "self-process completion", GAC Toyota also uses wireless Anton devices in the production process, which can visually display the working status of each process. Once a problem occurs in a certain process, the system will issue a warning and stop the production line if necessary. Relevant personnel will analyze and solve the problem, further improving quality management efficiency.
Multiple measures are taken to ensure the quality control of Wilanda body aluminum plates
In the stamping workshop, the biggest difference between GAC Toyota and other car manufacturers is that more than 90% of the stamping parts are produced in-house. About 2 times more than the industry level, from large stamping parts such as floors, cowl fenders, wheel covers, longitudinal beams, to small stamping parts such as front and rear subframes and C-pillar reinforcements, all are made in-house. The advantage of in-house manufacturing is that it can most effectively ensure quality. The maximum strength of these stamping parts reaches 1180MPa, and the accuracy, surface quality, and formability are all in compliance with Toyota's highest global standards, which is more secure.
Here we would like to focus on the aluminum plate used by GAC Toyota on the Wilanda body for the first time. As we all know, aluminum has been a car body material that car companies have been keen to use in recent years due to its lightweight effect. It can not only improve handling performance, but also effectively reduce fuel consumption. Of course, better use effects also mean higher manufacturing difficulty and cost. The difficulty of quality management of aluminum plate stamping is that it is time-sensitive and must be used within a specified time; it is non-magnetic and requires a special blowing device to separate the material; its ductility is low, its stamping formability is poor, and it is easy to crack; in addition, its hardness Low, more sensitive to foreign matter than iron.
GAC Toyota adopts these methods in the stamping process to effectively guarantee its quality control. First, Toyota's patented grid mold technology is used to process 1mm grid-shaped grooves on the surface of the mold to allow foreign objects to fall into the grooves and avoid contact with the panels, thereby reducing pitting on the aluminum panels.
Secondly, its trimming/flanging knife uses DLC coating. DLC is a coating similar to diamond. It has strong hardness and smoothness, high anti-adhesion, and is not easy to remove. Sintering can reduce the production of aluminum powder and pitting.
In addition, GAC Toyota also made its own vacuum device and installed it on the mold to promptly suck away the aluminum powder produced during edge trimming to reduce pitting and indentations.
The secret of welding high-strength steel
GAC Toyota TNGA model uses a large amount of high-strength steel, and the body frame uses ultra-high-strength hot-stamped steel. The overall body rigidity is greatly improved, which is safe and safe. Improved driving performance. For example, the 2021 Ralink’s ultra-high-strength steel above 590 MPa accounts for 42%, and the highest strength of the entire vehicle’s steel reaches 1,620 MPa.
The challenge of high-strength steel for manufacturing quality control mainly lies in the welding process. The body of TNGA models such as Ralink has more than 5,000 welding points. Compared with the more than 2,000 welding points of other brand models, it can be said that It's quite difficult. GAC Toyota relied on several unique technologies to overcome these quality difficulties.
In the welding workshop, the traditional practice in the past was to use different fixtures for different car models. For example, if 6 car models were produced, there would be 6 sets of jigs, which would be switched according to the car model. Now the entire line uses Toyota's unique multi-model universal assembly station fixture, which is universal for multiple models and can be replaced seamlessly to achieve flexible production, and the accuracy control range is within ±0.02mm. This is also the latest cutting-edge technology developed by Toyota. It is not available in other car manufacturers. GAC Toyota is also the first among the Toyota business groups to adopt it.
Another top-notch equipment is Toyota's unique electrode tip shaping machine. This is Toyota's patented technology and is equipped with every spot welding machine. Every time the robot welds, the electrode head will be polished in the shaping machine to keep it in a brand new condition every time, thereby ensuring that every welding spot is a standard welding spot. While ensuring the accuracy of solder joints, spatter is reduced, because the quality of the electrode tip is stable, and phenomena such as poor weld nuggets, solder joint burrs, and poor surface quality particles caused by spatter are reduced.
In addition, laser online inspection is also used to measure the front, side and rear of the vehicle with laser accuracy, and take photos of the solder joints. If the accuracy does not meet the preset range (within ±1.5mm), The machine will automatically alarm, and relevant personnel will intervene to solve the problem to prevent defective products from entering the next process.
Paperless iPad is introduced into the inspection workshop
In the assembly workshop, GAC Toyota is the first factory in China to adopt the chassis transverse body transportation method. The benefits of this are on the one hand It can save space by 50% compared with traditional vertical production lines and reduce the moving distance of operators during the operation. At the same time, the chassis is mounted on a pallet, which can quickly switch pallets and achieve comprehensive production.
At the same time, it also has a complete quality traceability system. There is a coating image detection system at the entrance and exit of each production line in the final assembly. It automatically takes pictures and the detection data is wirelessly transmitted to the backend computer. After comparison, the body can be known Check whether there are any quality problems such as scratches and dirt on the surface, and save the data to facilitate quality traceability in the future.
In the process of vehicle body surface inspection, GAC Toyota introduced a new light shed design concept. The light shed maintains an illumination of 2000-3000 lumens, which is consistent with the sunlight at an outdoor temperature of 35°C, restoring the customer's Real usage scenarios allow operators to grasp the overall appearance quality of the vehicle from the perspective of real customer experience when inspecting the appearance.
In the inspection line, we also saw that paperless iPads have been used in the manufacturing process. In the past, the inspection line was inspected and confirmed through paper forms, which was time-consuming and labor-intensive. After introducing the paperless iPad device, operators can visually compare the actual vehicle parts and the impact data in the iPad, which improves the efficiency of inspections. At the same time, when the operator checks the information of each vehicle, it will be sent directly to the system through the iPad. Each department can promptly control the quality status of each vehicle through the back-end system, greatly improving efficiency.
Summary
After visiting the production and manufacturing process of GAC Toyota, the biggest feeling is the strong driving force and efficiency brought by the guiding ideology of "high quality comes from process". The core of quality control management of "self-process completion" allows problems in production and manufacturing to be discovered and solved in real time during the process, which not only improves the overall quality, but also greatly improves efficiency. Due to such an advanced quality control management system, the quality of GAC Toyota TNGA products is indeed very reassuring and reassuring!
This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.