Product Quality and Safety

At Arçelik, we strive to provide high-quality products and services regarding customer needs based on our policies. Our priority is to ensure consumer safety and quality assurance throughout the life cycle of our products.

Product Quality and Quality

Management

Arçelik has a structured quality management mechanism across all processes: from product development, design, and manufacturing to sales and after-sales services. Arçelik’s headquarters and its manufacturing plants have obtained ISO 9001 Quality Management Certification to maintain a high level of product quality and ensure the effective management of each division.

Q-STAR audits have been configured to measure the maturity level of the quality management process and identify priority improvement areas, creating a traceable method for continuous improvement. This audit has been carried out at all divisions of the company beside ISO 9001 internal audits since 2020.

Arçelik’s quality management processes in accordance with the company vision and strategies have been carried out in a holistic manner to satisfy continuity and improvement for the highest-level product quality. Quality improvements for each manufacturing facilities and related suppliers have been coordinated end-to-end including product quality, perceptual quality, electronics quality and logistics quality aspects within the alignment of Central Product Quality Directorate and related manufacturing facilities’ Quality Assurance Departments.

We are also implementing measures such as Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, Lean Sigma, Total Quality Management and Advanced Data Analytics on an ongoing basis to effectively execute and maintain our quality management system.

For further information, please refer to our Quality Policy.

For further information on other management system certifications and which location obtained certificates, please refer to our Sustainability Reports.

Arçelik Reliability & 6 Sigma Day

As part of our in-house event, the Reliability & 6 Sigma Day, we share the work carried out on product reliability, quality and safety. We aim to ensure safe design and production by transferring new technical knowledge throughout the company. By creating a product safety culture, we reduce product and service call rates. In the Reliability & 6 Sigma Day, teams discuss their progress in developing new reliability, safety and 6 Sigma methods and tools and we also invite experts from various fields to present and share their insights.

Product Safety Management

At Arçelik, we give utmost priority to product safety in all processes including supply, design, production, storage, shipment, installation and after-sales service. We comply with all applicable product-related directives, regulations and standards of each country and region where we conduct business. We take international product safety standards and Arçelik’s Product Safety Design Criteria as the basis for product safety. We also closely monitor the work of the International Electrotechnical Committee and the European Committee for Standardization/European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization, including the technical committees and working groups that study safety standards. Our team of product safety experts contributes to these committees to enhance safety standards requirements.

We test our products and their components according to global standards and Arçelik Component/Test Instructions. With the developed forced failure tests, we check whether the components fail safely. We also take a step further and evaluate possible risks of our products with Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) studies and eliminate them at the design phase.

We conduct risk assessments in accordance with regional and international standards and regulations, while systematically monitoring identified risks and corrective actions.

Product safety risk evaluations are updated and followed by the established Product Safety Risk Committee periodically every two weeks. The Product Safety Risk Committee conducts necessary reports to the Risk Management Committee before the Board of Directors and C-Level. The Head of Enterprise Risk and Insurance, Legal, Product Safety, Global After-Sales and Global Communication are the members that make up the Committee. We ensure continuous improvement and continuity in product safety through routine internal products and process audits carried out by our Central Product Safety Department. We emphasize the importance of product safety by providing product safety trainings to our suppliers and each employee, improving their technical and behavioral competencies.

Recall

The health and safety of our customers are among our top priorities. For this reason, when a recall is required, we make announcements to our consumers using the most effective communication channels in accordance with local legislation. In order to eliminate customers’ concerns over product safety, we publish product safety alerts on our website and provide free call center services for recalls. Our recall procedure is based on approaches of PAS 7100 which have been endorsed by the Office of Product Safety and Standards (OPSS).

 For further information please refer to our Product Safety Policy.