Case study: Quality foundation improves Delphi's time to market

Delphi is a leading global supplier of mobile electronics and transportation systems, including powertrain, safety, steering, thermal, and controls and security systems, electrical/electronic architecture and in-car entertainment technologies. Engineered to meet and exceed the rigorous standards of the automotive industry, Delphi technology is also found in computing, communications, consumer accessories, energy and medical applications.

Faced with increasing competitive pressures in a contracting automotive market, Delphi Thermal engineers realized that good enough wasn't going to accomplish its goals nor satisfy automotive OEMs that are demanding lower cost components with tightening quality requirements.

According to Jim Anderson, a senior project engineer for Delphi Thermal, "We're responding to the increasing pressures to reduce cost, become more productive and maintain our quality by implementing best-in-class technology with a focus on lean re-engineering that enables us to fully leverage a global technology footprint."

A key components of the automotive supplier process is a strict compliance to OEM quality requirements through Production Part Approval Process, or PPAP. Missing requirements or providing components that do not conform to quality standards can have a costly, time-consuming impact on production schedules. The problem is compounded with shortened development schedules and the mere fact that delivery acceptance of the component will not be approved until the PPAP milestone is passed.

While Delphi Thermal has been meeting these requirements across multiple product programs for many years, the company, like most manufacturers, has been putting its focus on increasing productivity while maintaining the quality.

Rapid change, more complex product requirements and new technologies are increasing the demand for the time, cost and quality resources at the company's disposal. Knowing that inspection and interpretation of dimensional quality has a direct impact on the company's PPAP process, Delphi worked with Siemens PLM Software for a solution. "With Tecnomatix' integration to Teamcenter, we saw the opportunity to more easily propagate standards, re-use best practices and increase the consistency of meeting product quality requirements," Anderson said.

The cadence of quality

Looking in-depth at the current process flow and the existing technologies involved, Delphi's objective became clear as the company defined a plan to re-engineer processes and utilize integrated technology to reduce the variation associated with interpretation and inspection of design record requirements.

Understanding where requirements are first documented and ultimately approved in the PPAP process " while analyzing how those requirements were consumed throughout the quality lifecycle " called attention to many opportunities for improvement. Existing processes were disconnected; engineering features on drawings meant that these features had to be manually added to CAD representations; and disconnected data stores meant they likely had to be entered multiple times, increasing the chance for errors.

In addition, multiple machines required various programming environments, which meant that results were open to different interpretations that were not easily shared with the various groups involved in the quality lifecycle of planning, execution and analysis.