Jaguar regains its reputation Essay

Originally called the Swallow incline Car Comp whatever, puma Cars was founded in 1922 and became famous for its luxury and sports cars. In 1990, puma was taken over by Ford and is now a entirely owned subsidiary. At the time of the Ford takeover, mountain lions look performance was something of a paradox. Aesthetically and in terms of on-the-road performance the cars were lots highly regarded, especially by a hard core of enthusiasts. so far point they could not ignore Jaguars reputation for devising cars which were, in comparison to its rivals, of exceptionally poor reliability. Plagued by under- authorisement and a conservative technical-led, rather than customer-led, culture, the companys old plants were struggling to achieve steady acceptable levels of conformance prize.At this time, the JD Power survey of customer atonement of cars imported to the US ranked only one car (the Yugo) pass up than Jaguar. All this changed through the 1990s. The company invested heavil y in training, especially in quality techniques such as statistical process control (see Chapter 17). Piecework was abolished, as was clocking in and a frequent productivity bonus introduced which back up flexible working.Other shop floor initiatives included the introduction of multiskilled teams, centre productive maintenance (see Chapter 19), continuous advancement teams (see Chapter 18) and bench scotching against the best in the calling (see Chapter 18). The success of this quality improvement programme was dramatic. It encouraged Ford to invest in new Jaguar models and also had a signifi hatfult pretend on customer satisfaction. The same surveys which once put Jaguar at the bottom of the league now rank it in the very(prenominal) expire group of luxury car makers.Jaguar regains its reputationAnswer1.What does quality mean for a motor vehicle manufacturer such as Jaguar?This box highlights how Jaguar have always been regarded as refined at some aspects of quality (suc h as performance and aesthetics) but very poor at other (such as product reliability). This gives us a clue as to the various dimensions of quality which be important to Jaguar. They are as follows. Performance The speed, power, cornering and other aspects of the way the car drives. Fast speed, stringy acceleration, responsive handling, and so on are generally regarded as the mark of a prestige car. Aesthetics The boilers suit appearance of the car should forge its values. A Jaguar is smooth, luxurious, dashing and sporty The key question for Jaguar is does the overall appearance and shape of the car reflect these values and salute to its target customers? Equipment Is the car equipped with the type of things one would expect from a luxury car such as leather seats, global specify organization equipment, adjustable headlights and so on? Finish Are the seeable areas of the car free from any marks or blemish? This office an absence of scratches or small marks as well as an appropriate surface finish to all visible surfaces. Build quality This normally refers to how the car ascertains as doors open and close, windows are raised and displace and so on. Is there a satisfying solidity about the feel of the car? Reliability When in use does the car (or some partially of the car) break down? Do things go wrong? After sales service Should the owner have any problems or wishes to know something much about the car, is it easy for him or her to do so?All of these can be expanded considerably but the list does give an overall indication of the very many dimensions of quality which are important to Jaguar.2.How did the changes which Jaguar made to its operations practice affect the quality of its products?The changes made by Jaguar (at least those described in the box) were all to the processes within the operation. For example, bringing up would equip operators with the skills to assemble the car in the correct manner without make mistakes. Stat istical Process Control (covered in Chapter 17) would enable the operators to make convinced(predicate) that shopfloor processes operating as they should be an preferably improving. Changing the payment system both encouraged operators to learn much skills and prevents them sacrificing quality in localise to earn higher wages in the short term. Multi-skilled teams would allow any absent workers to be covered for by people with equivalent skills and, more importantly, encourage continuous improvement to production processes. Totally productive maintenance, improvement teams and benchmarking would likewise allow everyone working at the company to contribute to the general improvement effort.All these changes were important but it is also vital to cause that, without the necessary investment, the changes in Jaguar would have been difficult or even impossible. Yet these issues are connected. It was the success of the companys management in starting these changes which encouraged the parent group (Ford) to invest considerable sums of cash in the company, which in turn allowed the changed described above to have a real impact.