The future of quality assurance in the automotive industry

Quality controls play a crucial role in automotive production. This is the only way to satisfy customers, fulfil legal requirements and ultimately achieve economic success. However, many production processes are based on outdated systems. These systems often run slowly and thereby impair operations management. A solution is urgently needed.

Cross-plant operations are often coordinated manually. This means that there is always a delay when tending to downstream processes. These processes usually have to be documented on paper, which makes it all more difficult. Tracking the status of follow-up work is time-consuming and prioritisation is done manually in an Excel file. When doing things this way, sustainable reporting and deep integration into production-relevant systems is not possible.

Modern IT systems make it possible to track the progress of repair work in real time and transparently prioritise vehicles. A central application that makes important applications available in one place is no longer a vision, but rather has long since become reality. It controls follow-up work, locks vehicles and components during production and thereby makes a decisive contribution to quality assurance. Seamlessly connecting external service providers while factoring in relevant security guidelines is also possible and saves time and effort in terms of management.

In addition to the higher degree of scalability and improved performance, moving to the cloud offers another advantage: the microservice architecture supports the decoupling of the production system. This allows the system to be centralised, which makes it possible to coordinate cross-plant operations and implement electronic feedback on the progress of follow-up work. This replaces the previous paper-based documentation and thus increases production efficiency.

A new centralised system for quality assurance in the motor vehicle production sector offers numerous advantages:

• Real-time tracking of progress on follow-up work
• Transparent vehicle prioritisation
• Highly efficient queries for identifying the number of affected vehicles
• Connection of external service providers while factoring in relevant security guidelines
• Management of cross-plant operations
• Scalable, modern software architecture
• Savings through digitalising paper-based documentation