Defect Reduction in the Welding Process of Motorcycle STAY R-L Parts

Abstract

The case study company runs the business of automotive and motorcycle parts manufacturing. In the past, the company faced the main problem of a lot of defects of the STAY R-L part welding process. This research aims to reduce these defects by applying Pareto Chart, Cause-and-Effect Diagram to identify and classify defect types, and also analyze the cause of defects. It was revealed that the number of defects from welds without full penetration was the most. The main cause is that the previous welding fixture wasn’t locked firmly and angular fixture hid welding alignment. Therefore, the improvement was performed by designing and developing new fixture in order to reduce the defects in the welding process. The results show that the defects from welds without full penetration decreased from 2.04 percent to 0.34 percent or decreased by 1.70 percent, representing 83.33 percent decrease of the defects.