When Marc Trahan began setting up a new services group responsible for tracking product quality for Audi North America in June 2002, he had no idea what awaited him. Although a controversial safety issue had plagued the model 5000 series in the United States back in the early '80s, Audi North America had since done well, with rising sales and an improved reputation for quality and technological sophistication.
But just a few months after the North American unit took over its own quality monitoring from the parent group, Audi owners began experiencing stalling problems en masse. "In September and October 2002, we had a fairly high rate of failures, particularly on the 4-cylinder engine," says Trahan, director of product quality and technical service at Audi North America. Auburn Hills, Mich.
Trahan says the failure rate "exceeded 50%," affecting a total of 101,000 cars from the 2001, 2002, and 2003 model years. In most cases, he says, the cars had to be towed in. "It was an issue with our ignition coil that manifested itself in cold weather," he adds.
Audi traced the root cause to a process issue at its supplier of circuit boards. "Cold weather would cause a problem so that there would be no spark for the spark plugs," Trahan explains.
To mollify customers, Audi sent a letter to owners suggesting they bring the car in and have the faulty ignition system replaced. Things got worse, though, when Audi discovered that because it had only one supplier for the circuit board, there suddenly was an acute shortage of replacement units. Owners had their cars towed in, only to learn that they faced an inordinate wait to have them repaired.
"We sent teams of people to the supplier and fixed the development issues," Trahan adds. "We weren't providing sufficient quality supervision for this supplier.
"It also taught us not to rely on one supplier. Today we have a second supplier. It's like an insurance policy."
Trahan believes the automaker benefited from the setback. "The fact that this ignition coil problem arose sort of helped us. Today the reliability rate for all our cars, in terms of warranty costs and failure rates, is up."
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