IATF requirements pay more attention to the product quality, not only from the customer’s plant complain point of view, but also to the performance in relation to the vehicle using by the end customer as warranty.
For this reason, anyone in an organization who deals with warranty returns should identify the main IATF requirements that focus on this area. These include, among others:
- 8.5.5.2 Service agreement with customer
- 9.3.2.1 Management review inputs – supplemental
- 9.1.2.1 Customer Satisfaction – Supplemental
- 10.2.5 Warranty management systems
8.5.5.2 Service agreement with customer
If a service agreement has been defined with the customer, the organization should verify that the respective service centers are compliant with their requirements. In addition, it is the organization’s responsibility to provide training for service personnel, if required.
Most often in this case you can meet with the so-called a diagnostic procedure that determines what diagnostic activities should be performed by a service station using appropriate tools and equipment. This is primarily to eliminate the possibility of replacing components, which then, during the analysis by a given production plant, do not show any problems with their functioning.
Such part is known as no trouble found (NTF). Of course, NTF translates into an appropriate warranty invoice costs, which in this case is shared 50% / 50% between the client and the organization. By implementing the appropriate diagnostic procedure, the organization eliminates the possibility of an increased occurrence of parts with the NTF status, thanks to which it ultimately translates into a reduction in warranty costs.
9.3.2.1 Management review inputs – supplemental
The warranty returns area must be included in the management review input. It covers two main topics:
– results on warranty returns and
– identifying potential warranty returns as part of a risk analysis (such as FMEA)
From a performance point of view, the most rational approach is to verify that our warranty performance meets the customer-defined goal. We can focus here both on the target in terms of effectiveness (indicators: IPTV, MIS, C1000, R1000) and efficiency. The latter is most often managed through the evaluation of debit notes that are issued by customers in relation to the number of parts sold in a given period.
In case of identifying potential returns from the field, it seems reasonable to use FMEA as a risk analysis because even the FMEA manual itself considers at least 3 defects: operations (internal notifications), customer (0-km claims) and the end user (warranty claims).
9.1.2.1 Customer Satisfaction – Supplemental
If we manage field returns in organization, we must remember that we should monitor customer satisfaction regarding warranty returns (which must be included in the management review), field returns and recalls. At this point, it is worth distinguishing between the warranty and field returns. A warranty return is a component that is replaced by the dealer considering the agreed period of use of the vehicle or its mileage.
On the other hand, the return from the field is the part that is over the warranty period, but the customer, for some reasons, asks for its verification. In practice, this concerns scenarios related to security or with a large number of occurrences assigned for one type of failure mode, which causes degradation of the system over time.
10.2.5 Warranty management systems
The above requirement indicates that if an organization is involved in the analysis of parts from the field, it must apply the approach based on meeting the requirements for the part for which no problem was identified after its analysis – NTF.
Additionally, some customers require additional reference manuals for the evaluation of warranty parts. In practice, the Stellantis-FCA group requires using of CQI-14 “Automotive Warranty Management”, and German customers (Daimler, VW, BMW) require VDA Field Failure Analysis.
As we can see proper identification of IATF warranty requirements is crucial for sub-supplier which are involved in this activity.
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