Quality Improves in the Peak Season of Lovol Tractor Factory

March 31, 2016

Recently, China Association of Agricultural Machinery Manufacturers has organized a campaign to find the most satisfied brand for agricultural machinery users, where the whole series of Lovol Tractors won Agricultural Machinery User Satisfaction Award. Large numbers of Tractors are marketed on a daily basis.
The user is the last one to experience the product and only products that can satisfy users are entitled to be called as good products. Why Lovol’s Tractors are competent to win such an honor? Any reasons behind it? We visited Lovol’s M platform tractor factory with this question in mind. Now is the peak season. Upon stepping into the plant, what unveils before you is busy workers as well as hustling and bustling scene. Agricultural machinery products that make users satisfied are made on rows upon rows of production lines. Person responsible for Lovol’s M platform tractor factory said proudly, “Lovol’s popularity among users lies in its excellent quality.”
The ultimate goal is to upgrade quality, while this can be realized through the improvement of engineering capability and its system. Staff of Lovol’s M platform tractor factory all adhere to this principle. To reach the objective, Lovol’s Agricultural Machinery Business Division Head Office has signed Quality Commitment Blue Book with business divisions at all levels. Detailed quality improvement goals are laid out in the Blue Book. Lovol’s M platform tractor factory, as a manufacturing business unit, disassembles quality objectives issued by the head office and proceeds from the reality of tractor factory. In order to increase quality awareness of all staff, it links quality index with factory and personal performance.
Speaking of products’ assembly and adjustment quality, one thing we cannot skip is the efforts to build up a labor force. It is learned that four variables decide products’ stability, among which, one of the key variables is the skills-set stability of labor force. To tackle the bottleneck issue of stabilizing staff members’ operation skills, Lovol’s M platform tractor factory adopts “triple orientation” to new staff members because of the rising labor demand during peak season. The training is targeted on quality, safety and skills improvement for newly employed staff. After passing the “triple training”, one can begin apprenticeship and follow a coach to conduct actual operation. It is learnt that the orientation rate of new staff working on front line of Lovol’s M platform tractor factory has reached 100%, which cultivates available talent pool to guarantee quality during peak season.
To achieve quality objectives, everyone in Lovol plants is making constant innovation. Leader from Quality Control Division of Lovol’s M platform tractor factory told reporter, previously when there is a quality problem during manufacturing process, Quality Control Division should follow it up, but synergy among different divisions was always was hard to achieve. This fact would bring down efficiency and affect the results; in the end, delaying manufacturing process. To meet quality improvement requirements for three production lines of M platform, Lovol factory has introduced system of responsibility of general manager to guarantee quality and set forth matrix management framework covering six aspects such as leak-proof, cleanliness and ergonomic. This approach not only enhances synergy among different divisions but also realizes timely response and rapid handling of any issue occurring in the manufacturing process. The leader of Quality Control Division took an example to help us understand how the system works. M-D series tractor was discovered to have the potential quality hazard of leaking oil after assembly because the length (252mm) of flexible conduit, connecting braking oiler, was a little bit shorter. Having identified the problem, Quality Control Division cooperated with the plant to keep a close eye on it and contacted head office of Procurement Management and asked it to inform the supplier to lengthen the flexible conduit to 265mm. Meanwhile, we asked Technology Research Institute to make technical modification to the flexible conduit. Four days later, new flexible conduit and technical modification were in place, and the potential oil leakage hazard was resolved. The new mechanism to resolve problems not only improves synergy among different divisions but also transforms the phrase of “quality comes first” into action.
Quality-oriented principle is closely followed by all staff of Lovol’s M platform tractor factory. Now, Lovol is in its peak season and new output record keeps emerging one after another. However, they focus on quality all the time and earnestly carry out quality requirements of Lovol to deliver satisfactory products to users.