IMPROVING QUALITY

Mazda believes that it is important to enhance the quality of all things offered outside the Company, including products and services, to satisfy customers as it seeks to exercise its corporate philosophy. The Company has defined the Five Types of Mazda Quality: quality of work, quality of management, quality of work environment, quality of behavior, and quality of all things offered outside the Company, which is underpinned by the preceding four. In line with its quality policy, the Company continues to evolve its initiatives and promote united collaboration among all areas of operation to further enhance Mazda’s unique value. 

Five Types of Mazda Quality

Approach toward Quality Improvement 

To deliver customers safety, trust, and excitement through automotive lifestyles and to ensure that customers always feel the value of its products, Mazda positions customers as the starting point of all of its business activities and makes Groupwide efforts based on the following Vision for Quality Assurance. The Company recognizes that quality assurance does not conclude unless the quality includes not only the outward appearance of products but also the processes used by customers. Accordingly, the Company works diligently to develop personnel who thoroughly understand its customers, and who can think and act in accordance with the belief that everything starts with the customer.

Mazda Quality Management System 

Acquisition of ISO 9000 Series

To provide customers with satisfaction through an enriching car ownership experience, Mazda has to gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which customers use their cars and the value they expect. Mazda values customer feedback all over the globe as its greatest asset. The Company is working to store this feedback in knowledge databases, and to reflect it in product planning, development, and elsewhere. Moreover, through activities such as those to educate about or raise awareness of quality, the Company strives to continue developing personnel who think of customers as their first priority and think and act accordingly.  

Activities to Turn Customer Feedback into Knowledge

Customer feedback from all over the globe are fed into a knowledge database, and Mazda is working toward vehicle development that reflects these quality criteria and optimization of product quality standards.

Sharing of Past Cases

Mazda shares the lessons learned from past cases through exhibits of actual defective products and e-learning programs in order to drive reforms in behavior.

【Statistics from FY March 2024】

・Participation in exhibits and e-learning programs by approx. 16,000 individuals

Quality Awareness-Raising Activities

Mazda holds quality meetings on a regular basis. At these meetings, top management communicate their commitment to compliance and quality in their own words to all employees. This provides opportunities for individual employees to reflect on and think about their work, thereby enhancing their compliance and quality awareness.

Quality Education

For the purpose of developing human resources capable of proactively finding and solving problems from a customer viewpoint and working for continuous improvement, quality control education is provided for employees. Quality education courses taught by internal instructors are offered, and employees take appropriate courses when their job type or management level changes.

Groupwide Quality Education Courses (FY March 2024) 

To satisfy the diverse needs of customers and offer greater trust, joy, and excitement, Mazda is engaged in establishing a consistent quality level to be assured at all stages from planning and product development to the delivery of products to customers.

Mazda is committed to process assurance to improve the performance of products as well as to enhance the quality of new technologies in response to regulation and electrification trends. Process assurance is the approach of ensuring a consistent quality level at all stages spanning from engineering (planning and product development) to product creation (purchasing, vehicle production, logistics, and after-sales services). Through this approach, the Company identifies the important elements necessary to guarantee the quality of each function and performance based on an accurate understanding of customer needs and expectations. The Company has established a system to maintain and manage these elements in every stage from engineering to manufacturing. The cooperation of partners is imperative in improving quality levels. For this reason, the Company promotes personnel and technology exchanges as well as other co-creation activities with customers. Furthermore, to allow customers to feel the joy of driving through its products, the Company identifies the functions and performance that embody the joy of driving for each stage from before getting in the car to after starting driving, so as to achieve increased consistency in quality.   

Monotsukuri Innovation

Looking five to 10 years into the future, Mazda has implemented Monotsukuri Innovation for efficiently developing and manufacturing products. Shared development methods and manufacturing processes are made possible by using bundled product planning for models to be introduced in the future through an approach that transcends the boundaries of market segments and model classes. 

During the development phase, optimized structures for each function are shared among vehicle models and classes to apply these structures to a wider range of vehicles. In the production phase, Mazda’s unique flexible production system is used to produce products engineered based on a common architecture concept in a highly efficient and flexible manner. Mazda is aiming to raise operational efficiency by building flexible production frameworks that can handle changes in volumes and can quickly introduce new models with a minimum of investment. Through Monotsukuri Innovation, the Company has achieved efficiency improvement in terms of both product development and manufacturing facility investment as well as significant improvements in vehicle costs in relation to Skyactiv Technology and products after and including the CX-5 launched in 2012.

Through design based on common architecture under Monotsukuri Innovation, Mazda is able to promptly apply the latest technologies and designs to all of its products. In new-generation technology development, the Company is working to enhance the efficiency of development processes through bundled planning and model-based development.

Cars are being called on to provide increasingly advanced and diverse functions, while vehicle architecture and control systems are becoming more and more complex. Model-based development, which uses computers to efficiently replicate development processes, is essential to keep developing complex systems quickly and with limited resources. Model-based development involves creating computer models of the vehicle, control systems, drivers, passengers, driving environments, and other development subjects and conducting development via thorough computer simulation. It is an efficient method of optimization. Mazda is carrying out model-based powertrain and vehicle development through simulations for stages spanning from design to vehicle evaluation. The Company thereby strives to reduce the number of prototype parts and actual unit verification in order to develop complex, highly sophisticated technologies and products quickly and with minimum resources while also ensuring quality.

Mazda believes that to further promote model-based development, universities working on cutting-edge technologies and automobile manufacturers and suppliers that cooperate in manufacturing must build upon the SURIAWASE 2.0 concept, which is aimed at enhancing development efficiency by using virtual models across the engineering chain. To that end, the Company is playing an active role in activities by the Japan Automotive Model-Based Engineering center (JAMBE). To spread the SURIAWASE 2.0 concept throughout the Japanese automotive industry, the Company is engaging with domestic automobile manufacturers and business partners.

Model-Based Development

A technique to develop outstanding products by modeling (quantifying) and connecting all four elements of (1) the car, (2) control systems, (3) the driver & passengers, and  (4) the driving environment without using an actual vehicle

What Is Advanced Matching Development SURIAWASE 2.0?

Created based on the SURIAWASE 2.0 concept presented in the materials prepared by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in 2017 

SURIAWASE 2.0 is an initiative to enable academia and businesses (parts manufacturers and OEMs of all sizes) to share digital models across the board, linking academic research with development of parts, systems, and vehicles, thereby allowing both sides to coordinate and make adjustments (“Suriawase” in Japanese) digitally from the initial stages of development, without using physical machines. This approach makes it possible to create the most advanced development community in the mobility sector, able to carry　out optimal and high-grade monozukuri (engineering and manufacturing) efficiently and without rework.

Goal: Concretize SURIAWASE 2.0 

Achieve the most efficient development processes in the world and create new value by innovating the research, development, and production processes

Mazda strives to offer an enriched car ownership experience in which customers can feel satisfied with their car and realize its value as a product. While respecting each vehicle as a certain customer’s one-and-only, the Company endeavors to ensure comprehensive and speedy quality improvement and enhance the quality of present and future products.  

To ensure early detection and early solution of market problems, Mazda has established a system for unified management of all items of quality information. Such information is gathered from distributors and dealerships in Japan and overseas and by employing the results of surveys by external institutions and conducting the Company’s own market research. Through the system, the collected information is shared Companywide in real time. By using the system and closely monitoring daily progress, the Company investigates quality-related incidents and their causes, determines and implements improvement measures, and confirms the results. In this manner, the Company works to achieve comprehensive  and speedy improvement. The Company also carries out quality improvements capitalizing on the vehicle information collected through the utilization of connectivity technologies in addition to conventional initiatives based on customer input.

Quality Improvement System 

【Examples of Surveys, Analyses, and Improvement Measures 】

Mazda prioritizes customer safety and security above all. Through a strict quality assurance system, the Company conducts inspections on conformity with laws and regulations of relevant countries and on functions to be used by customers with a view to manufacturing vehicles that customers feel safe using. This quality assurance system is maintained and managed by having development, production, and quality divisions audit each other from their respective independent standpoints. 

Recall Procedures (Overview)*

Mazda aims to provide customer service that customers can always rely on. To this end, in addition to providing safe, reliable, and comfortable vehicles, Mazda also provides a stress-free ownership experience that allows customers to enjoy their vehicle-related lifestyle, including visits to dealerships. Understanding customers’ difficulties and expectations is crucial to successfully tackling this challenge. In addition to the fundamental efforts to develop and provide tools and service manuals and to establish parts supply networks, the Company is working with dealerships in Japan and overseas to reform operations, create new touch points with customers, and cultivate human resources capable of considering and acting toward customers’ happiness.

Mazda is committed to providing dealership and distributor experiences that accommodate the needs of individual customers. The Company therefore promotes operational improvement measures driven by dealerships and distributors with the aim of heightening process quality and creating more comfortable work environments for employees. The Mazda Production System, which is built on Mazda’s accumulated production insight, is a central component of these initiatives. Through initiatives involving all dealership and distributor employees, the Company seeks to eliminate operational inefficiencies while increasing the value of processes from the perspective of the customer. In FY March 2024, the Company expanded the scope of dealerships and distributors in which improvements are pursued to include those located overseas in addition to those in Japan. To enhance the level of customer satisfaction initiatives at Mazda dealerships and distributors, the Company has prepared award systems for sharing and honoring best practices demonstrated by the staff of dealerships and distributors that have contributed to increased customer satisfaction through excellent teamwork and the sales and service staff members who achieved outstanding results.

At Mazda dealerships and distributors around the world, systems have been established to gather opinions and requests from customers, to respond to them honestly, accurately, and quickly, and to reflect this input in sales and services in cooperation with the Mazda Head Office.*1 The contacts for each market area as well as an FAQ section*2 are available on Mazda's corporate website for the convenience of customers. To strengthen bonds with customers, Mazda conducts global surveys focusing on the Mazda brand experience, sales and after-sales services, ownership cost, product attractiveness, and other specific items. Through these surveys, the Company identifies problems in each market and addresses them in cooperation with local dealerships and distributors. Having defined indicators to measure customer satisfaction, the Company is implementing a plan–do–check–act (PDCA) cycle to improve customer satisfaction. 

*1 Distributor list by country/region 

*2 Inquiries from Japan/FAQ (in Japanese only)