Iran Khodro (IKCO) is Iran’s largest automaker with a 60 percent domestic market share and a strong international presence. Kianoosh Pourmojib is IKCO’s deputy CEO of quality.
How would you rate this year’s vehicle quality improvements compared to the production runs of 2008?
To customers, referring to service stations and changing a part during the guarantee period is considered as the most important indicator of a product’s quality. A significant slowdown in customers’ referral to service stations in the second quarter of 2009 indicates a 30 to 50 percent raise in quality of all IKCO products.
What are your plans to further boost the quality of your vehicles?
IKCO’s upcoming quality plans have been defined as a comprehensive program and announced to all the units within and outside of the company. So the units will be able to align themselves to implement IKCO’s quality objectives, while timely implementation of these programs are monitored and evaluated weekly.
Which international standards do IKCO’s vehicles meet?
Car making technology is promoting quite rapidly. Tracing technology on this route will lead to changes in products. In order to adapt to this ever changing process and presenting modern and up-to-date products, IKCO has made great strides as well. For instance, we can name the modification of 206 engines, installation of multiplex system on Samand, receiving Euro IV emission standards for the new generation of 206 SD as some of these steps.
Meanwhile, other international indicators confirm the competitiveness of IKCO products regarding quality. Peugeot 206 is currently being produced in Brazil, Argentina and Iran and based on performance indicators, IKCO’s 206 stands higher than the others. And since Iranian customers pay close attention to this issue, performance indicators seem very important.
Standard parts and components may be considered as another factor.
Domestic suppliers of 206 and Samand bear E-MARK sign. This sign is carved on the product and shows its relevancy to European Union standards and is itself a criterion to export these products to the EU countries.
Is there any control on the QC engineers’ performance working on production lines in order to improve the quality of the products?
IKCO manages its assembly lines by utilizing Peugeot quality monitoring systems and the performance of quality inspectors are evaluated weekly and then monthly. On the other hand, about 600 QC inspectors working in part making divisions closely watch the process of producing and delivering parts and components. In this regard I would like to say that the quality of a faultless product can not be merely guaranteed through inspection. IKCO does its best to guarantee quality in during the production process from designing to after-sale services.
Using poor and non-standard parts can be considered as one of the reasons to end up with low quality cars. How do you evaluate this?
Production process and controlling the quality of parts used in IKCO’s supply chain passes through various controlling check points such as raw material purchasing control, controlling the process of part production and controlling the final product. The purpose of this complicated process in the supply chain, production and sales is to reduce the defects with a large amount of controls allocated to.
In such a vast and complex process, quality assurance is done based on global standards. Faultless production claim would be considered as too idealistic, but thinking about it and moving in this direction has made Iranian part makers to be capable of competing in global markets and dispatching their products to giant carmakers all around the world.
Planning for IKCO’s supply chain has led suppliers to higher competitiveness and faultless products.
A Comprehensive organization and planning has been done in SAPCO (the Supply Automotive Parts Co.) and passenger car production plants by IKCO in fields of quality control, quality assurance, receiving part maker’s products and etc; and currently about 2 million parts and components pass through quality control check points every day and enter the production process. IKCO is a showroom for the country’s capabilities in designing, pricing and quality.
IKCO’s role is to improve these capabilities in almost 2,000 part makers working in its supply chain that started by production of Paykan and thrived to 206, Samand and Tondar and it is still improving.
Is it true that IKCO uses Chinese parts in because of their low prices?
The process of quality control and confirming parts for car production takes place based on international standards. First of all the part maker’s capability is approved and the final quality is determined by controlling the part maker’s production processes, general plan, continuous improvement and quality assurance of final products.
Due to the fact that more than 90 percent of parts used in IKCO’s products are supplied by domestic part makers; the quality control process is very precise and the same procedure is applied to foreign purchases. Main factors in approving parts are their quality according to our customers and then competitive prices. Therefore, using foreign parts in this regard does not bring about any loss in quality. It should be noted that IKCO’s foreign purchases are mainly from European suppliers and Peugeot’s major part makers. These suppliers are located in China and there products are used by giant carmakers all around the world and they are far different from those low quality part makers in China.
