Regional quality award from Nissan Europe

In recognition of excellent quality performance last year, the Schaeffler Group has been awarded a Nissan Europe Regional Quality Award for supply of tappets to Nissan Europe

In recognition of excellent quality performance last year, the Schaeffler Group has been awarded a Nissan Europe Regional Quality Award for supply of tappets to Nissan Europe.

Only three suppliers out of 500 received such an accolade.

At the Nissan Europe 'Annual Supplier Quality Conference' held at the Newcastle Civic Centre last month, the Schaeffler Group was awarded a Regional Quality Award for its excellent quality performance from April 2005 to March 2006.

The Nissan Regional Quality Awards are given to a small number of suppliers each year who demonstrate excellence in quality performance during a 12-month period.

Suppliers are measured according to the Nissan 'Supplier Scorecard' (SSC) system, a common, global system with indices that Nissan uses to rate its suppliers.

The Schaeffler Group is one of three suppliers out of a total of 489 suppliers in the Nissan European region, to win a Regional Quality Award, with two other European suppliers receiving a Most Improved Award.

Suppliers are measured against five main criteria, with each supplier accruing points for each category.

'PPM' or 'parts per million' defect rates; warranty claims ratio against a supplier; a supplier's timeliness of response; how fast the supplier responds to an elevated problem, known as corrective action request (CAR); and whether the supplier's parts have caused any recalls, either on a vehicle already in the market or at a dealership.

Receiving the award at the Newcastle Civic Centre on behalf of the Schaeffler Group was Dorian Quirk, UK Quality Manager at the Schaeffler (UK) Llanelli plant.

The award was presented by Colin Dodge, Senior Vice President of Manufacturing at Nissan Europe.

Deborah Quinn, Total Customer Satisfaction Supplier Quality Assurance engineer at Nissan Europe, commented: "We award points on a monthly basis to each supplier, based on five key measures.

Therefore, to be one of only three suppliers to win our Regional Quality Award means that the Schaeffler Group had to perform extremely well during that period".

John Taylor, Director and General Manager of the Automotive Division at Schaeffler (UK) , echoed Quinn's views: "The Award was in recognition of our excellent performance as a supplier of tappets to the Nissan Sunderland plant.

Our defect rate for supply of tappets was absolutely zero over the 12-month period.

Over the last two years, the Schaeffler Group has supplied Nissan with around nine million tappets in total, at a defect rate of zero parts per million.".

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