QM Knowledge: Warranty Management

All over the world, automotive manufacturers install supplier parts in a wide variety of vehicle models. Those who collect, standardize and analyze field data as part of their warranty management know the failure behavior of their own products – and can initiate suitable corrective measures at an early stage to reduce warranty costs. Read here what Warranty Management is all about:

• Definition
• Tasks & Processes
• Advantages

Warranty management deals with the handling of defective production parts whose faults are only discovered in the field, i.e., at the customer's premises. The aim is to use feedback from the field to identify the causes of defects, initiate corrective actions and increase product quality in the long term.

As part of efficient quality management, warranty management helps to reduce costs and avoid risks by defining a professional process for responding to recourse claims or recalls. Warranty management is used, for example, in the automotive or aerospace industries.

To run a successful warranty management, you need valid data. However, days and weeks often pass before the data that suppliers receive from their customers in the form of debit notes is ready for analysis. Time that the supplier does not have: reviewing the claims received is a necessity that must be done in a very timely manner. The big challenge is therefore to prepare the individual customer data as quickly as possible so that important insights can be derived from it. Risks can be quantified in this way.

• Standardize customer data: Most manufacturers from whom suppliers receive field data in the event of a claim use their own data format. As a result, information that is actually the same is only available in differently prepared form. Only the standardization into a uniform format creates the comparability of the data.
• Checking warranty claims: Even manufacturers make mistakes – so are the reported warranty claims really all justified? It is necessary to check whether the contractual agreements have been complied with and whether the data is valid at all.
• Analyze field data: Once a valid database is available, the field data can be analyzed and useful information about the products can be obtained. If it turns out that the supplier is really responsible for the quality defect, damage limitation must be carried out. It is important to identify the failure behavior at an early stage and to act quickly as a result of well-founded analyses.

Successful warranty management provides you with a well-structured database. This not only serves you to analyze field data, but also enables the traceability of specific cases in the event of returns or recalls. Thanks to the established processes of warranty management, you shine with short response times to recourse claims and increased product quality in the long term.

But to take advantage of these benefits, you first need to collect, standardize and analyze field data. What takes a lot of processing time with conventional solutions, warranty management software usually does automatically. The resources gained in this way can then be used again for the really important tasks: the complex analysis of causes and the initiation of effective corrective measures for the ongoing improvement of products.