This section describes Metso Minerals Crushing and Screening Equipment’s warranty terms and warranty process. First, Metso CSE warranty terms are presented. Secondly, the warranty process and warranty lead-times are explained. Finally, the warranty han-dling process and the idea of corrective actions are presented.
2.2.1 Metso CSE warranty conditions
Unless otherwise agreed, Metso’s warranty period is two-dimensional with time and us-age. In this thesis, warranty is handled in these terms without exceptions about limited or extended warranties. Limited or extended warranties are feasible, but not prevailing.
(Anon., 2015)
Metso warranty is a two-dimensional and non-renewing warranty with one warranty stage. The warranty terms require product maintenance, and it has an influence on the warranty decisions. Product with poor maintaining may fail because of misuse, and if maintenance is poor, the failure won’t be covered by the warranty terms. (Anon., 2015) From the buyer’s viewpoint Metso’s warranty is an implied and express warranty. Im-plied warranty of merchantability and imIm-plied warranty of fitness both are valid warranty sides as crushing and screening machines are discussed.
Metso warranty from the manufacturer’s viewpoint:
Protectional
Promotional
Legislative
Societal
From the manufacturer’s point of view, the protective aspect of Metso’s product warranty is meaningful to the company, because warranty terms mention right product usage, and which parts are not covered by warranty. The promotional aspect is also valid, as the competitors’ offering is similar (Sandvik, 2016) warranty. In fact, if product quality and warranty case amounts and costs would enable it, deciding to extend the duration of the warranty would definitely give competitive advantage to Metso against its biggest com-petitors. Quality is one of the most crucial competitive edges for Metso’s products, and
the warranty terms could mirror it by granting a longer warranty period than the compet-itors can offer. A long warranty period would function as a guarantee of a high quality level, and as a competitive advantage against competitors.
2.2.2 Warranty process
When machine breaks down under warranty terms, this catalyzes the warranty process.
The warranty process has an important role for quality management. Metso Minerals war-ranty process flow is described in the figure below.
Figure 10 - Warranty process (Kaaja)
Some simplification has been made, and not every warranty case directly follows this process flow. For example, some of the smallest warranty claims do not need call the service, because repairing can be performed by a customer’s own mechanic or the biggest warranty cases may require a thorough root cause analysis and planned corrective actions, before the repair work is commenced, to make sure that reparation will be correctly made.
However, accepting the warranty claim requires that the repaired machine and all of the repairing costs are listed up.
The warranty process can be divided into two sub-processes like in chapter 2.8 – the customer service process and the claim process. Dividing the warranty process into these categories is presented in figure 10. Because the customer is always a company, whose business activity always suffers major consequences when a product breaks down, the customer service process is the prime focus, and the continuity of the customer’s produc-tion process flow should be secured with minimal possible loss. The warranty handling between the customer and manufacturer is working with quite a good lead-time.
When the priority is put on customer service, other parts of the warranty handling may remain unheeded. A new and more customer-oriented strategy and organization may boost the capability to better seize the warranty cases. In order to make the warranty han-dling wider and more efficient for the assembly organization, the engineering department or suppliers’ quality management should collaborate.
2.2.3 Warranty handling
Warranty report has six possible statuses in the warranty handling system. These statuses are listed below:
Approved partly, fully approved and rejected are the main statuses which are commonly used.
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2.2.4 Planned corrective actions for reported issues
Most of the reported warranty cases initiate corrective actions with a root cause analysis, where the warranty case should be gone through and analyzed. Corrective actions are usually provided after the broken machine has already been repaired, and the main role of the corrective actions and root cause analysis is to ensure, that similar kinds of warranty cases won’t occur in the future. Unfortunately the quality of some warranty reports doesn’t allow performing a proper analysis of the case and its causes, or the process ena-bles the avoidance of the corrective actions, although those should be performed.
After the warranty report has been made and inspected by the warranty handler, the report is always sent to the responsible party of Metso. These responsible parties are the engi-neering department, assembly department and the quality team.
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However, the customer warranty feedbacks represent the information about product reli-ability, manufacturing quality, design quality, suppliers’ quality and finishing quality of the product. This information gives a great opportunity to make significant improvements to the products, and furthermore improve manufacturability, product quality and customer satisfaction. Therefore, exploiting this information is a prime factor in continuous im-provement.
2.2.5 Service tickets / recalls
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At first, this section briefly describes the warranty data, on which this thesis’ analysis is based. After that, this section discusses warranty costs and case amounts by different cat-egories, which are: product catcat-egories, product models, product modules and sub-mod-ules. Warranty costs are also analyzed by other classifications such as total costs of claims, by assembly methods and crushing hours.