Exploring the Potential of Quality Tools in Tire Retreading Industry: a Case Study

The general objective of this paper is to describe the application of quality tools in an uncommon industrial environment - tire retreading. The specific goals are to better understand the root causes of the main quality problems that result from the production process, to rank those causes taking into account the importance of their occurrence, to identify the critical step of the production process in view of the main problem identified, and to explore the potential causes of problems in that step. The methodology used combined basic and new quality tools in order to identify, classify and analyse the main problems according to their priority (weight of importance. The tools used were Pareto Chart, Brainstorming, Fishbone Diagram and Matrix diagram. The company where the study was carried out was the Ken Tire Industrial Complex, which is one of the biggest Tire Retreading Companies in Middle East. The data was collected during all the year of 2009 from quality and production records. The main problems were classified according the cost of defects that happen during the production process and the use of appropriate improvement quality tools is proposed in order to minimize the impact of defect causes in final products and semi-products.