You can, and that's why: how AvtoVAZ decided to improve the quality of cars
In Togliatti, work is in full swing on fine-tuning the Azimut crossover before launching into the series. Here, the craftsmen train themselves to apply mastic to the seams of the doors as quickly and deftly as possible. There, the attachments are tried on a reference body to assess the accuracy of their manufacture and ease of installation. Pre-production Azimuths are rolling around the training ground during sea trials. The journalists were invited to the plant for another purpose — to talk about quality, a topic historically sensitive for AvtoVAZ. The Izvestia correspondent spent three days literally X-raying the quality control system used at the plant.
What is Avtovaz-style quality?
What does AVTOVAZ mean by the word "quality"? An official document signed in May 2025 and freely available on the company's website states that this concept combines three key parts — meeting official security requirements, meeting customer expectations and, as a result, achieving profit targets to meet the expectations of partners and shareholders. And it consists of the quality of cars produced, the quality of dealers and services, and the implementation of new projects that are attractive to buyers. More than fair. The representatives of the plant are even more honest about the quality.
The plant employs 38,000 people, has its own ambulance substation, fire station and internal traffic control service. There are 55 canteens and buffets open to feed all employees. About every two minutes, a finished car rolls off the assembly line.
The departure of foreign shareholders and suppliers from Russia literally became a turning point in AVTOVAZ's life. On the one hand, all the usual supply chains of components for machine assembly have been cut off. In the process of building new ones, the number of complaints and warranty requests inevitably increased. This year alone, their number has already been returned to the best in this parameter in the entire history of the plant in 2021. On the other hand, administrative barriers for the development and release of new models have collapsed. Previously, this process was repeatedly hampered by foreign shareholders, and some projects were canceled altogether. Now AvtoVAZ has been able to independently "tighten" the internal standards for checking cars and handling complaints.
If the client saw
The basis of the quality control system is the AVES standards, which have been used for quite a long time and are based on the principle of "what would the customer say if he saw it". Each possible defect is rated (1+, 1, 2, 3). The ones are "not working" / "unsafe" / "spoils the appearance" and mean the replacement of a part or repair. A deuce is an uncritical, but still relatively noticeable defect, which, if necessary, can be fixed during maintenance after purchase. A troika is an inconspicuous defect that a customer is likely to ignore, even if they notice it.
Anyone can take additional training in one of the many "Schools" right in the workshops of the plant. For example, at the Karakuri School, where they teach how to invent devices that simplify work without energy sources. If you create and implement something later, you can get a bonus.
Plus, the car itself is divided into four zones, depending on visibility and the importance of purely cosmetic flaws, where the doors and hood are more important than the thresholds and the place under the license plate. But the car and the parts have a long way to go before this stage.
Gaps without misalignment
First— the stamps. From each batch, the first, the last, and every hundredth or two hundredth between them are taken for verification, depending on the part. Most of them are checked on the "caliber" — this is a special plate to which the part is attached, and you can check what gaps there will be when it will dock with other parts.
One of the two door panels on the 3D scanner
The gap tolerances vary between models — somewhere 4 mm ± 1 mm, somewhere more, but it is important that the gaps themselves are without distortion, with a constant width. Some of the parts go to 3D scanners for a couple of million dollars apiece, for which the hair on the surface is already a big unevenness.
"Calibre" for 1D measurements (gap width only) and installation for 3D measurements
Such samples allow you to monitor the quality over time and isolate potential problematic batches from thousands to hundreds of copies. By the way, a stamp kit for one door costs about 600 million rubles. The resource of each is up to a million parts. That is why it is so difficult to make changes to the design of existing machines, even if there is an understanding of how and what to modify. For example, the rear door of the Niva was updated only last year, when it was time to change the shape, although from an engineering point of view, the question "How to make it close better and not play" was solved long before that.
"Anti-forceps" and women's hands
After welding, some of the finished components are used for non—destructive tests using ultrasound, but three bodies a week are literally torn apart with special hydraulic "anti-tongs" - the welding points should not stick together, the metal should break out "with meat". It takes approximately three shifts to check all 5,000 welding points of each body.
Ultrasound of welding points, normal and incorrect. The second one was shown to us simply by applying the sensor to an empty surface, there were no defective points.
After cataphoresis, priming and painting, some of the bodies are also removed from the conveyor, but there are no clear intervals. Where there is human involvement, random sampling is more indicative and does not allow employees to relax, which would be possible if they knew which instances would not be checked for sure. It's not that the employees are not trusted, just "trust, but verify." Here the car is scanned again — they look at the total thickness of the paintwork and the thickness of each individual layer, perform hardware colorimetry and electronically check whether the shagreen on the paint is correct.
Devices for measuring the parameters of the painted body
Each assembled Lada goes through a light tunnel, where they are examined for defects in general. Many female craftsmen take turns looking at their part of the car and putting a personal stamp on the inspection sheet if everything is fine, or notes if something needs to be fixed. At the same time, there is no gender preference in any positions, it's just that women choose this role more often than men. There is an assumption that it is easier for them to perform monotonous work that requires constant attention. We noticed a scratch on the unpainted plastic lining of one of the cars, told the inspectors about it, and in response we were shown that it had already been marked in the diagnostic sheet and the part would be replaced.
How do they get into the color
200 vehicles (approximately 15% of all produced vehicles) are selected from all vehicle inspections every day for a final half-hour express inspection with a full inspection, including an assessment of the uniformity of the paint and its compliance with reference samples from different angles of view, on planes and especially at the joints of parts made of different materials. At the moment, the work of paint suppliers has been set up so that they send separate compositions for plastic and metal, so that in the end the colors do not visually differ.
The tape is constantly moving, so you have to keep moving forward with the car.
After that, the car is checked on the indoor track for, in particular, extraneous noise and vibrations. Another 20 lucky cars (all models and versions are required) leave for a two-hour test drive at the test site. And two cars a day are already leaving for a four-hour trial. As they say at the factory, if the odometer of a new car is not the standard 5 km, but more (up to 40), it means that it was checked especially carefully and everything is fine with it.
Under the microscope
Of course, that's not all. There are tests of cast parts on X-ray machines 10 times more powerful than fluorography and showing a picture in real time. Microscopy of filtered flushes from the surfaces and from the internal channels of the block head and cylinder block. Measuring the dimensions of bodies on Zeiss devices, which are so demanding of accuracy that a concrete foundation was first poured under them, then the equipment was installed, and after that the walls of the room were erected. The accuracy there is already micron.
Of course, these checks are nothing new. The main innovations in the quality control protocol are their frequency — at the moment, some of the checks are performed 5-7 times more often than according to the old rules of the alliance. This, according to the staff of the quality department, allowed us to achieve results quite quickly. The numbers and the eyes seem to be as they say: "you can!", but the question remains — "why?".
So why?
In AVTOVAZ's new concept and development, quality and customer satisfaction are a key step towards real financial results. Now, on the verge of entering the Azimuth market, the system is brought up well enough to be shown. Moreover, few automakers let the press so deeply into their production in principle, and even more so with photographic equipment. Quality is exactly the piece of the puzzle that is always needed, but now, in the current format of competition in the market, it is more important than ever. Perhaps all these expensive and complex technologies, repeated inspections and tests will really result in the very "quality from the consumer's point of view."
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
