Stellantis‘ brands have been entrenched at the top of J.D. Power’s Initial Quality Study in recent years after decades that saw most of them in the middle of the pack or floundering near the bottom of the rankings.
There was a breakthrough in 2020 when Dodge tied with Kia for the top spot, making it the first domestic brand to finish No. 1. Ram tied for third that year and then flip-flopped with Dodge to lead the industry in the 2021 study.
Dodge finished second in 2022 and reclaimed No. 1 status in 2023, while Ram jumped back into second place this year after a mediocre showing in 2022 that was attributed to the introduction of the Uconnect 5 infotainment system. Alfa Romeo joined the upper echelon in 2023 by rising 24 spots to finish third as the highest-ranked premium brand.
David McDonald, who joined Stellantis in 1993 and has been head of customer experience in North America from July 2022 until his upcoming retirement this Friday, said the automaker has developed an intense focus on quality.
McDonald, 58, spoke with Staff Reporter Vince Bond Jr. about some of the measures that have been put in place at assembly plants recently to improve quality. Here are edited excerpts.
Q: How does it feel to see these major gains while the industry as a whole is seeing declines in quality?
A: It feels very satisfying, the assurance that what we know the recipe is continuing to work. We’re a company that fosters a culture that’s intensely customer-focused. We have a motto here in customer experience that every customer counts; every journey matters. We have the best practices, the methods, the controls from the best of ex-PSA, ex-FCA. Things are flowing. We’re implementing them. We’re measuring them. It feels really good not only to have Dodge No. 1, Ram No. 2, Alfa No. 3, but if you look at the numbers, four is kind of far away. It’s an indication that we know what to do; we know how to do it. We need to continue to execute it across the company.
Looking at the brands that did really well, what were some of the factors that were behind those improvements?
We have from the top of the house, the CEO all the way down to the team leaders, team members on the floor, an intense focus on quality. That’s one of the company’s key two or three key metrics. As we go, we’ve learned the best things from Europe, South America and North America, and we make sure this truly global company is using the best practices. If we do something in our plants, it’s immediately shared with others.
Every single plant has to have three or four local dealerships that they have a strong connection to. Engineers spend every Friday morning going there seeing what the customers are seeing, the dealerships they’re seeing [and then] feeding it right back to the plant.
The other thing is control tower; we just implemented that recently. It used to be the corporate engineering group was the hub of quality. Now, with Stellantis, it’s the assembly plants. Everything happens at the assembly plants. We have all our engineers come for [the] warranty blitz. We have suppliers come. We also now have a control tower person at every single assembly plant. What they’re responsible for is every single claim that comes in for every internal audit that we have from a quality perspective [and] that the plant immediately has a clean point established, at least a containment point. [For example], a bolt was found loose in one of the vehicles; [we] immediately got containment. It was only on one, but it was saved. So having that control tower person there in the plant, they’re living it, they’re reading it, they understand everything, and they get immediate containment on the line. It is one of the huge initiatives that we’ve done to get these really good gains.
How long has this control tower strategy been in place?
We’ve been very focused on the same type of thing, but feeding the information from corporate to the plants, it’s just not as efficient, obviously, as the person physically located in the plants. It’s assurance that you can walk down to the line and see it. It was anywhere from eight to 12 months ago.
You mentioned that the company likes the assembly plants to have close relationships to a few of the local dealers. How long has that been a thing the company has focused on?
That’s one of the best practices that we’ve had merging the best of the ex-PSA and ex-FCA, so about a year also. We have the script. We know what we have to do. We’re adding new elements. But the key is to make sure every plant, every person is executing them exactly the same way, and that takes a little bit of time.
Dodge was No. 1 this year. J.D. Power says that the brands with older models tend to do better than the brands that have lot of newer cars in them, so what does that say about Stellantis and its ability to make sure those older platforms are still up to standard?
There is a merit to that. In the automotive industry, nothing is really carryover. But making sure [we’re disciplined] when we put something new in is vetted from a quality perspective.
If you take a look at the average age of our portfolio, it’s at the industry average — we’re not any older, any newer. So you take our overall achievements, and we’re pretty much right on par with everybody else. There’s some merit to having a more established product than brand-new ones, but I could talk all day about what we’re doing on brand-new ones to make sure that our quality is flawless when we launch.
How do you keep this momentum going?
The momentum has been going from 2020, and we know the formula how to get there. We have our rhythm. It’s just executing that rhythm everywhere. This isn’t radical change. We have the support from the CEO down to every team member to do the right thing for quality. Everybody is playing their parts and their swim lane, doing the right thing, raising issues, whether it’s manufacturing, engineers, suppliers, customer experience.
It’s not anything new. I mentioned we implement best practices. Those are tweaks to the big formula to go even faster because we have to go faster. We have internal metrics. We know we’re improving. This is vindication that we’re continuing to improve; just execute the script. We have the support of every leader, every team member to do that.
