Customer Satisfaction and Quality

Quality and customer satisfaction together are the central mission of all of our employees. Delivering high-quality vehicles is of paramount importance to customers' willingness to consider our vehicles; it also affects their satisfaction and loyalty. Quality is also important to our costs – high-quality vehicles have lower warranty repair costs. We include quality as one of the four design principles1 that guide the entire design and manufacturing process for our vehicles. It is also central to our sales and service operations.

Measuring Quality and Customer Satisfaction

We track our progress in achieving this mission through a combination of internal and external measurements that assess how we are doing and where we can improve. The Global Quality Research System, which tracks "things gone wrong," is our primary quality survey.2 The GQRS survey is implemented for us by the RDA Group, a market research and consulting firm based in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. We also subscribe to J.D. Power and Associates' Initial Quality Survey and APEAL study. We track warranty claims and costs internally. In 2009 and 2010, we saw an improvement in both the internal and external measurements of quality. By several measures, our quality is now competitive with the highest-rated brands. Global and regional quality improvements are detailed below.

Global Quality System

Quality really is Job #1 at Ford. We use an extensive Global Quality Operating System at every stage of vehicle development and manufacture, to make sure that our vehicles have world-class quality and performance. Our Global Quality Operating System was fully rolled out in 2008 after several years' implementation. Though we have always used quality systems, they were not always standardized across locations. By requiring standard processes and implementation everywhere we operate, we intend to continue and expand our world-class quality results.

We begin designing for quality from the very earliest stages of every vehicle program. Approximately three-and-a-half years before a new model rolls off the assembly line, we virtually "pre-assemble" the vehicle, to identify and address potential quality issues at the beginning of the design process. This allows engineers to make corrections – and ultimately improve build efficiency, worker safety and quality – long before the vehicle design is finalized and built on the real assembly line. By using this virtual quality system we have cut time-to-market by eight to 14 months, depending on the vehicle program, reduced costly late engineering changes and are building fewer – but better – physical prototypes.

Once vehicles pass these virtual quality tests, we undertake extensive testing of actual vehicle prototypes for both manufacturing and performance quality.

Even after our vehicles have left the factory, we continue our efforts to improve quality. We evaluate every manufacturing-related warranty claim and migrate effective solutions into the assembly plant. We also gather feedback from our customers using survey tools, to ensure that we understand customers' problems with our vehicles, including actual product failures and customers' opinions of vehicle designs and features.

We use a Six Sigma process to resolve quality problems. In 2007, we completed our effort to integrate Six Sigma quality methodology into the Company's core processes. We now have Quality Functional Leaders who assist every organization within the Company in the implementation of Six Sigma problem-solving methods to improve quality and eliminate waste. Around the world, we have 60,000 Six Sigma "green belts," more than 7,000 "black belts" and 400 "master black belts" – Ford employees trained in how to apply Six Sigma principles and methodologies.