POSSESSING A QUALITY CULTURE THAT IS CENTERED ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION, TOFAŞ ENCOURAGES ITS EMPLOYEES TO TAKE PART IN AND TO IMPROVE QUALITY MANAGEMENT AS A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE.

Seeking to directly understand its customers’ quality expectations, Tofaş strives to raise the quality of its manufacturing and service processes and to maximize its quality competitiveness throughout its value-creation chain. The company’s quality management system is regularly updated and improved in light of changes and developments in customers’ expectations.

Possessing a quality culture that is centered on customer satisfaction, Tofaş encourages its employees to take part in and to improve quality management as a matter of principle. This approach gives the company a significant competitive edge as a world-class manufacturer.

WORLD CLASS MANUFACTURING

World Class Manufacturing (WCM) is a constellation of methodologies and techniques that can be used to systematically improve and develop one’s manufacturing competitive strengths. WCM’s focus on such issues as workplace safety, quality, cost, logistics, and environmental wellbeing, is rooted in the “Concept of Zero”: zero workplace and environmental accidents, zero manufacturing defects, zero production losses, and so on.

The WCM program was originally initiated in-house at FCA in 2006 with the aim of raising its manufacturing standards to world-class levels. Today WCM methodologies and techniques are employed around the world in 213 FCA plants as well as in the operations of about 400 of its suppliers.

Tofaş initiated its own WCM projects in 2006. As a result of an audit carried out in 2013, the company became one of only three in the entire FCA community to qualify for WCM “Gold” status. With the additional progress that was made, in 2017 the plant’s score was increased to 77 points.

Focusing on constantly raising its manufacturing standards as it advances in its WCM journey, Tofaş has made significant improvements in its workplace accident, external quality indicator, productivity, and mechanical breakdown performance. Each and every one of these improvements was achieved through the company’s systematic approach and with the involvement of its employees. In 2018, the average number of suggestions for improvements submitted by the company’s assembly-line employees was 27.

Since 2009 Tofaş has likewise been expanding the scope of its own WCM involvement through the “World Class Supplier” (WCS) program that it encourages its suppliers to take part in. As of end-2018, 27 of the company’s suppliers had committed themselves to WCS. Three of the ten FCA global suppliers who have so far achieved WCM “Bronze” status are Turkish firms that