Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Quality assurance

The continual Quality drive within Underhill Engineering  is  planning  to  evolve  “Project Performance Assessments”, ( PPA for short ) – to work alongside  all  Projects  ensuring that all elements of customer standard and specialised project requirements are successfully in-place, to achieve total customer satisfaction with problem-free site installations, ( with zero non-conformances ).


Underhill Engineering regularly set objectives and targets to achieve continual quality improvement right across the company.

We utilize Advanced Product Quality Planning ( APQP ),  tools  that  are  strategically adopted to meet varying key customer and project requirements : 

  • FMEA  –  Formulated  on  Engineering Workshop  to  assess  and  prevent any potential failures reaching Customers. Ultimate aim to reduce / eliminate occurrences.
  • Quality Control Planning – For effective planning  and  “live” monitoring that planned  controls are being followed. Ensuring products are manufactured according to customer requirements.      
  • Process / Waste Stream Maps  – To show where materials and people can be effectively planned from supplier deliveries / to manufacturing process to identify and eliminate any needless waste.
  • Determine Quality “Gateways” –  Iterated  by  the  Quality Plan  where  an  agreed  series of hold points / tests  from  customer purchase order requirements are carried out.  To  ensure  continual compliance.
  • “Live” Pareto Analysis  –  ( Target Top 20% to hit 80% of Issues ),  breaking this down into finding the  changes  that  will  give  the  biggest  benefits, ( linked back to the PFMEA Documentation ).
  • Application of “8D” complaints methodology  –  Using  a  total  team  approach in capturing all the information  from  a  non-conformance  or  to  utilise  as a means to initiate a quality improvement drive,  to  process  important  protocols  with  measures for instant remedies, fault elimination and verification. This in-turn focuses on facts, instead of opinions.
Copyright 2010 by Clive