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WARRANTY MANAGEMENT

Reading Time: 4 Minutes 25.01.2021 Currents & Trends

Warranty Management – all the details you need in a clear and understandable summary:

  • What is Warranty Management?
  • Where does Warranty Management come into play?
  • What are the benefits of Warranty Management?
  • Successful Warranty Management with the right software

WHAT ROLE DOES WARRANTY MANAGEMENT PLAY IN SERIES PRODUCTION? – DEFINITION
Warranty Management regulates the handling of field returns in an organized manner. A “field return” is where the defects of a defective production part are only discovered after delivery of the finished product – i.e. out in the “field”.

WHAT ROLE DOES WARRANTY MANAGEMENT PLAY?
The role of the Warranty Management process is to collect, process and analyze feedback from the field, i.e. field data, using a structured approach. The aim is to ensure that problems can be identified in a timely fashion and their causes determined in order to be able to initiate appropriate corrective action. If this is done on a consistent basis, your product quality will also increase.

WHAT DOES WARRANTY MANAGEMENT AIM TO ACHIEVE?
The aim of Warranty Management is to reduce warranty costs in the long term and, at best, avoid recourse claims.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WARRANTY MANAGEMENT
The justification for using a Warranty Management system is its strategic importance across all management, value creation and support processes. Starting with your legal obligation to monitor products and including the commercial handling of your recourse claims, the processing of your complaints and, finally, dealing with defects resulting from series production. Taking these aspects into account, a Warranty Management system should be regarded as an integral part of your Quality Management system. IATF 16949 also emphasizes the expediency of firmly embedding your Warranty Management processes into your Quality Management system, in as far as this has been agreed by the contractual partners.

WHERE DOES WARRANTY MANAGEMENT COME INTO PLAY?
Field failures, and the recourse claims associated with these, are usually passed on to the supplier by the customer. This approach is particularly well established in the automotive, aerospace, rail and apparatus engineering industries and can pose a real challenge to suppliers: The response periods for rejecting recourse claims are short whilst the data volumes provided by the OEMs are huge and the amounts claimed for damages often immense. It is, therefore, strongly advisable for companies to set up an integrated warranty process.

A Warranty Management system has a holistic impact if it kicks in early on in the production process and continues on into the post-production phase. This is because it allows all the critical data to be collected and analyzed continuously throughout all phases of the process and means that these findings are also available during all the respective subsequent phases. A good organizational structure as well as a valid database are, therefore, crucial to being able to determine the technical and financial risks involved in the Warranty Management process. Consequently, a professional Warranty Management system is not just there to react to recourse cases but represents a strategic, entrepreneurial process for avoiding risks and reducing costs.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF WARRANTY MANAGEMENT?

  • Quick access to warranty data and their usage for analysis purposes
  • Traceability of individual cases and ability to audit with respect to returns, advance testing and recalled products
  • Rapid detection of problems/defects facilitates an immediate response: The setting up of service processes or countermeasures in the production process
  • Long-term improvement in the level of product and service quality
  • Reduction in warranty costs

SUCCESSFUL WARRANTY MANAGEMENT WITH THE RIGHT SOFTWARE
To achieve a structured and integrated Warranty Management process, we recommend being supported by an efficient software tool, such as our CASQ-it WM solution. This can be used to control your entire field return processing workflow.

The advantages of a WM software solution at a glance:

  • Efficient and transparent field data processing and analysis
  • Detection and rejection of unjustified recourse claims
  • Creation of a valid database based on justified field return notifications, e. g. for layer line diagrams
  • The causes are reliably identified, measures initiated, and their success monitored using impact analyses

Do you have any questions on how to introduce a software solution to set up a professional Warranty Management system at your company? Or are you interested in training on CASQ-it WM? Then please feel free to contact us.

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