Toyota Europe awarded the world’s leading steel and mining company its ‘Built in Quality’ supplier award, with ArcelorMittal employees from the automotive Europe commercial team and the ArcelorMittal Atlantique and Lorraine team travelling to Toyota Motor Manufacturing’s plant in Burnaston near Derby, UK, in order to receive the award.    

‘Built in Quality’ is a Toyota methodology that aims to continuously improve quality. Toyota trains its suppliers to understand and implement this methodology in the sites that manufacture products for the automotive company. 

ArcelorMittal’s ‘Built in Quality’ award follows the implementation of the methodology, which began around 10 years ago, and comes in recognition of ArcelorMittal’s quality performance that has continuously improved over the last three years. 

Toyota Europe gave a number of reasons for recognising ArcelorMittal with the award, including:  

• A low number of claims (for example, defects), exceeding Toyota Europe’s quality target by more than 15%
• Recognition as the best steel supplier in Toyota Europe’s annual supplier assessment for the second consecutive year
• The significant and increasing gap between ArcelorMittal’s performance and that of its competitors
• Zero quality problem reports (QPRs) in 2016 for ArcelorMittal Mardyck in France (part of the Atlantique and Lorraine cluster), the main mill supplying Toyota Europe with automotive and exposed galvannealed steels
• Recognition as the best quality steel supplier for Toyota Manufacturing Russia in 2016.

Commenting on the award, ArcelorMittal’s Francis Bugnard, general manager and technical general, Automotive Europe, said: 

“This award is a recognition of the amazing efforts our teams made to meet Toyota Europe’s expectations, year after year, in terms of quality, making ArcelorMittal their most reliable steel supplier”.

ArcelorMittal has received a number of awards from its automotive customers in recent years. In June 2016, the company received a best supplier award from its automotive giant PSA Group, in the technical cost savings category. In 2015, PSA Group gave the company a supplier award in the value creation category.

In the USA, ArcelorMittal was recognized with a General Motors Supplier Diversity Award for the second consecutive year. ArcelorMittal received GM’s 2016 Top Diversity Performer Platinum Award at the Michigan Minority Procurement Conference in Detroit, having been recognized with a silver award in 2015.

In 2014, ArcelorMittal was named by Germany’s Kirchhoff Automotive as supplier of the year in the ‘raw materials’ category, one of just three suppliers awarded out of a list of 4000 companies. Kirchhoff Automotive recognised ArcelorMittal’s excellent performance in terms of quality, logistics and service as well as its strong support for resale projects and ramping up phases.

Toyota also awarded ArcelorMittal in 2011, when ArcelorMittal Herbault, part of the company’s Distribution Solutions business, was recognised for excellence in delivery.

ArcelorMittal is the only automotive steel producer with a worldwide presence, delivering a large scale of products, solutions and services to automotive customers with the same quality focus in all regions.

In Europe, ArcelorMittal’s automotive business shipped more than 7 million tonnes of steel to customers in 2015. The European arm of the business has steelmaking and processing facilities for the automotive sector in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, Spain and a joint venture in Turkey. It has Tailored Blanks sites in Belgium, France, Germany, Slovakia, Spain and the UK.

In addition, it has steel service centres (processing and logistics centres) and stamping partners across Europe.