Warranty Impacts from No Fault Found (NFF) and an Impact Avoidance Benchmarking Tool

Abstract

In the automotive industry the occurrence of No Fault Found (NFF) events is considered to be one of the major threats to the overall reliability and customer satisfaction. It has become essential for automotive manufacturers to carry out quick and effective fault diagnostics to identify the root cause of faults so as to avoid NFF events. Automotive manufacturers need to reduce NFF so as to reduce warranty costs as it has been recognized as one of the most significant costs in their industry and has a major impact on customer satisfaction and their profitability. Research work in the aerospace industry has developed a NFF benchmarking tool designed to address the identification of where NFF costs can be reduced through process, procedural and cultural changes. NFF in the aerospace industry though is particularly concerned with costs of day to day operation and warranty issues are less of an issue. NFF events in a high volume industry such as automotive take on a different character whereby customer satisfaction and brand success is critical to profitability. Using an adapted benchmarking tool in an industry concerned with costs generated by warranty claims will identify the non-value added activities in the fault diagnostic process and provide mitigation strategies to address NFF. The chapter will describe the differences in the impact of NFF to aerospace where warranty costs resulting from NFF are less critical to the impact in an industry where warranty and customer satisfaction with new products is critical to its profitability and success.