At yesterday night’s 2019 Proton Saga facelift launch, Proton CEO Dr Li Chunrong thanked the many parties involved in not just the Saga’s launch, but the carmaker’s revival plan, which is clearly going in the right direction. The company’s ambitions have been made explicitly clear – a return to profit, number one in Malaysia, and top three in ASEAN.
With Geely as a partner, Proton has since pushed out one all-new model (the X70) and four improved minor change models this year (Iriz, Persona, Exora and Saga). Clearly, it has been hard work churning out so many new products within a short period, but there have been plenty of work behind the scenes to get the company fitter as well.
Quality improvement is one of the hardest tasks. “This is very difficult and very challenging,” Li said. “Under the help of Geely, we have made great progress – 22 months ago, our demerit score was 6,388 points, today we achieve 1,329 points. But we know that compared to Geely, compared to Volvo, we have more room to improve,” he added.
Accompanying Li’s speech was a slide that showed Proton’s Global Customer Product Audit (GCPA) at 6,388 demerit points (the lower the better) before December 2017. As pointed out, massive improvement has led to a current score of 1,329 points. The immediate goal is to reach the benchmark, which is Geely’s level of 1,100 points in 2019. Volvo is further ahead at 850 points.
Looking back at previous GCPA updates, Proton end-2018 target was 1,500 points and in mid-2018, the company was at 1,763 points. The Geely Group’s GCPA is used as a benchmark for Proton to conduct its product quality audits, in tandem with global standards. The audit system rates issues encountered on the production line based on their severity.
The Proton chief also touched on cost reduction as a major strategy for the company, while thanking the many vendors who were at the launch for their efforts.
“I know, many vendors may be unhappy, but this (cost reduction) is of critical importance. Later you will know that because of your contribution, we can provide more competitive products to our Malaysian customers. However, this is not enough. We have more to do,” he said.
Proton being tougher on itself and its vendors, cost wise, has so far yielded improved products at lower prices, with each of the four 2019 minor change models also coming with added content to go along with lower RRP. For instance, the Saga facelift – priced from RM32,800 to RM39,800 – sees a sticker price reduction of around RM2,000 for the top spec Premium despite the addition of new features and improvements. May this trend continue.
Anyone knows what’s Perodua GCPA score point?
3.85 GCPA
Must be better than Proton since Perodua have higher game changing sales than Proton, even placed at #1 every month.
J.D Power 2019 surveyed 2,644 car owners who purchased new cars between February 2016 and June 2018. These owners sent their cars to the SC for service during February 2018 to June 2019. Perodua obtain 752 marks, Proton 747 marks. Passing marks is 761, so both national car fail.
Far better? That is the truth!!! LPPL only.
Itu CGPA, bukan GCPA
thanks for highlighting, we didnt know that.
They never conduct this score point, but what i know is before Proton achieved 1329 points, Perodua just LPPL with Proton, so most likely 6000 points.
The old Proton bossku and Drb director dont know & dont care Proton’s quality audit score.
It is mahathir time as chairman with rm1million permonth allowance that doesnt care about the quality.. Now dr li chunrong do the business.. Thanks to DSNR..
Thanks to Optimus Prime..
That old man only cares about his cronies and sons contracts, even if fail, they still must continue to take in their substandard parts. PM Najib did the right thing by freeing Proton from their clutches. Now we see a 4x improvement in product quality.
So right bro. Btw, DRB hold 50.1% majoriti, Geely only has a 49.9% minoriti stake.
Tapi pandai2 berlagak rajin, mcm pegang majoriti plak. Now we see a 4x improvement in product quality. Padahal xde orang mintak pon
This showed that with the right partnerships, Proton & DRB is willing to be humble and learn from their partner inspite on holding the majority shares. The right partners like Geely will continue to grow and challenge Proton. The wrong partnerships like Mitsu, Honda, Suzuki only grew envious that Proton engineers could reengineer their rebadged cars better than the donor cars. Their Japanese pride couldn’t take it so what they thought became ajaran sesat. Glad that Proton is now learning from the right sifu. Para sensei sesat tak boleh pakai!
I don’t know about scores but I can tell you, Perodua sales is 4X that of Proton, despite bulk of Proton being ordered by the Government and Spanco.
This itself shows Perodua cars are far better than Potong
That’s like a rambutan seller boasting his rambutans are better than the Musang King seller fruits that is across the street. Many are laughing at your logic.
Better, no. Cheaper, yes. It depends on what drives the market. The lowest income group? The middle income group? The most bought will be the cheaper brands if the main drivers are from the lower income group. Quite evident in our market. So, better? Perhaps, but only in price
It’s a game of margins in heading towards profitability.
Selling less with higher margin may be better than selling lots margin is small.
Either way, as long as profitable company can continue to exist.
171,000 according to their resident supporter
According to Yoshiya Inamori, around 3000
Dread it. Run from it. Destiny still arrives..
Panel gaps and material build quality improved. A lot of potential P1 car buyers still do the customary “knock test” and ” slam door” test in showrooms, they looked super duper impressed.
This success all attributed to Yoshiya Inamori san – VP of manufacturing. Omedetou Proton !!
Proton now proven itself can compete openly.
MITI, Custom Dept must remove car excise duties okay!
Agreed. When P1 dan P2 total market share hit 99%.
MITI, Custom Dept must remove car excise duties. So buy more P1 dan P2 wokay?
P2 kata tak boleh!!!!
To help protiga, must add excise duty on P1 and P2
I heard toyota is much lower at 250 only. Since Perodua is Toyota shud be around 300? Much better than Volvo still. But great effort from geely in making proton Geely.
Yep come on fella Msians.. Majulah proton Geely!
Where did you hear from? Any source and link for that claim?
He tok kok only.
Ya you “heard” lol
Perodua is Toyota? In what way is Perodua is Toyota? Like how they disregard safety of customers by selling cars with poor safety spec? By covering up any fatal and dangerous faulty defects? By overpricing their lousy specced and outdated cars? By coming out with hideous designs one after another? By fleecing customers with overpriced servicing? That I fully agree.
Poor safety spec? The lowest range of Vios has VSC as standard. Can’t say the same with Proton, 2019 still launch cars without ESC in standard variants.
So where was Toyota safety when Iriz & Persona came out with ESC as standard? And you want to talk about 2019, Saga is now the cheapest car you can get with ESC & Traction control.
If you will pay the price of a Vios for a Proton, sure, the company can put everything in, including the kitchen sink if you want and make quality as good as the Japanese car. But, will you?
Wow, nowadays P2 salesmen pulling all kinds of stuff from their behinds. Can I know how big is your rear storage to keep all these BS?
I can see so many bored Perodua salesmen are practically screaming at this ‘bad news’ for them on their phones and PC, furious pounding the keyboards to come out with this many stories and half-truths. Reality is hurting them badly.
Wrong, Toyota GCPA is around 2500 points and Perodua just LPPL with Proton before Geely which is around 6000 points.
What’s the score Perodua? With lower score, can charge a bit more…..good marketing.
Perodua GCPA is around 6000 points.
It clearly shows how professional is Geely , earlier Proton do not care about Quality and now the new management focusing more into the important part where Proton failed in that early years.
Just let the product do the talking. Go to showroom and see the new Saga. I was there 2 hours ago sending my X70 for service.
For someone like me who has very low opinion of Tg Malim assembly line QAQC, I was bloody IMPRESSED with the build quality. Compared to the Gen2, this new Saga is like like chalk and cheese. Not only build quality has improved tremendously, the material quality is decent (for the price you pay).
Still some way to go vs the CBU X70 but overall for a local assembled car, it sure impressed me.
Price says a lot about material quality. Can’t really compare a 32k car with a 99k SUV. Even when at 3X the price but I don’t think you will feel or quantify X70 is 3X the quality from Saga. What I do see is the continuous improvements done on Saga which benefits customers and in long term benefits Proton as whole. Keep up the good work Proton!
If you don’t already know, the Saga is assembled in Shah Alam, along with the Exora and Perdana. Only the Preve (no more), Suprima (also no more) and Iriz are built in T Malim.
Things went downhill when DRB owned proton. They just don’t know what to do with it. DSZ was steadily improving proton by making their cars five stars in safety and acknowledged the power window issue. Granted there were a few things that’s overlooked like the sc but the brand perception wasn’t as bad when DRB was in charge. Now DRB’s butts are saved by Geely.
hmm..same case with Honda. If the Jap Mgmt haven’t intervened, Honda MY would not be the volume seller as at today. Normally DRB, too many procedures and lembab
“But we know that compared to Geely, compared to Volvo, we have more room to improve,” he added.”
At least they try to improve more (which is a good thing, as car buyers will have more opportunities for buying reliable cars).
to greatness of the Chinese….can even revive a ‘dead fish’. proton was not the problem, the ones managing it is the problem….cancer to be precise.