Raising the bar on quality in a digital world 

Electrolux is committed to delivering great consumer quality experiences, with digital solutions offering new opportunities.

In 2018, Electrolux reached historic quality improvements thanks to the Committed to Quality program. Going forward, we have ambitious, long-term goals to maintain this positive continuous improvement trend. The quality program contributes to creating better experiences and continuous improvement by listening to consumers, as well as prioritizing prevention and early warning detection of any failures in the market.

Today, digitalization and automation are increasingly contributing to quality improvements. For example, in the smart factories, Electrolux are introducing a 100%  process control system, ensuring that all products are fully compliant with requirements and consumer expectations.

To achieve 100% process control, Electrolux use vision systems, sensors and robots that are integrated into the process equipment, and in some cases, work side-by-side with employees.

There are several examples of these new digital systems in place in manufacturing across the business areas. As for example vision systems checking gas flames on hob burners in the production plant in Forlì, Italy, and robots checking gas leakage in refrigerators in Curitiba, Brazil. These systems are very effective at eliminating situations subject to human error, as well as continuously support the quality control of critical parameters. An effective application can improve the detection of defects and the precision of the detection by 10% to 20%.

This year Electrolux also introduced a new quality index to measure online consumer star ratings, which automatically interfaces with retailers’ web sites worldwide. This additional key performance indicator widens the existing index and also gauges consumer satisfaction, which is at the core of the Electrolux business model. 

Overall, this year’s improvements and Electrolux long-term ambitions show full commitment to consumer quality.

• Positive continuous improvement trend in all KPIs, with a record-level service call rate of 3.3% in 2018.
• Faster and more accurate quality control through digitalization.

• Consumer star ratings will be added to quality index.