Department - Author 1

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Department

Degree Name - Author 1

BS in Industrial Engineering

Date

6-2015

Primary Advisor

Lizabeth Schlemer

Abstract/Summary

Tesla Motors, in Winter 2013 during the author’s coop,had a variety of potential improvement areas regarding their quality engineering team. There were too many overall defects on the vehicles. Those defects were recognized as the cars were passing through inspection, coming off the line, as well as brought by customers to after-purchase service. One of the defects was the Charge-port Door Malfunction, in which the door of the Model S would not open on command. An additional defect was the Windshield Wiper Malfunction, in which the fluid was not hitting the car at the desired angle. Both of these defects at the time were two of the top 5 defects with respect to "End Of Line" repair, which is an inspection and repair area at the end of the production line, as well as with customers bringing their cars in. In addition, the process in which the quality engineering team went about their decision making in terms of which defects they decided to work on with limited resources was also improved. This report includes the problem statement broken down into specific quality defects that were reduced, the steps taken to detect the issue, the changes proposed both short and long term, the design of experiment to test if the defect condition improved, as well as the results. With regards to research, there is an in-depth literature review and a section on environmental impact.

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