Proton’s quality improvement audit shows positive results

KUALA LUMPUR: At the launch of the 2019 Proton Saga, the company CEO Dr. Li Chunron thanked all the parties involved in Saga’s launch and the company’s revival plan. Proton has already made its ambitions clear which involves being the number one automaker in Malaysia, a return to profit, and be amongst the top three carmakers in the ASEAN region.

After its association with the Chinese brand Geely, Proton has launched one entire new model - the X70 and four revised models - the Iriz, Persona, Saga, and Exora. It takes a lot of hard work for a company to bring out so many new products in such a short period. And we must not forget that there’s a lot of work that happens behind the scenes to push the company further.

Among the hard tasks, quality improvement is the most difficult one. Li said, “This is very difficult and very challenging. Under the help of Geely, we have made great progress – 22 months ago, our demerit score was 6,388 points, today we achieve 1,329 points. But we know that compared to Geely and Volvo, we have more room to improve.”

At the 2019 Saga launch, a presentation was shown from which one of the slides referred to Proton’s Global Customer Product Audit that stood at 6,388 demerit points (lower the better) before December 2018. The current score is 1,329 points. The goal here is to reach Geely’s level, that is, at 1,100 points by the end of this year. Volvo has a commendable GCPA score of 850 points.

Looking back, Proton’s GCPA in mid-2018 was 1,763 points, and it touched the 1,500 mark by the end of 2018. Proton conducts its quality audits by keeping Geely’s GCPA score as its target. The audit system scores issues on the production line based on the severity.

Proton’s chief thanks all the vendors present at the launch event for helping the company in reducing production cost. He said, “I know, many vendors may be unhappy, but this (cost reduction) is of critical importance. Later you will know that because of your contribution, we can provide more competitive products to our Malaysian customers. However, this is not enough. We have more to do.