Quality Control in Our Manufacturing Process

May 27, 2020 |

General, quality, manufacturing |

Tom McHenry

Quality control in our manufacturing process is one of the foundations of our business model here at CVC. In fact, it is our first core value: “At Custom Valve Concepts the race to quality has no finish line”. Being in the industries that we are, we realize that anything less than perfect is not acceptable. It is not acceptable to shut down a refinery, or an oil well, or a submarine oxygen generation. Not only does it lead to loss of revenue, but in some situations, it may even lead to loss of life. We take this seriously, and we take pride in knowing that we ship superior products.

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Our quality is captured throughout our entire product life cycle. Starting with design, our valves are built to be robust, providing high factors of safety in all aspects. We spend a lot of time upfront verifying and testing products under severe conditions prior to launch. This includes computation fluid dynamic simulations. Beyond the design stage, our manufacturing processes include multiple steps such as first piece approval, in-process inspection, final inspection, and most importantly 100% testing of all products prior to shipping.

To ensure continuous improvement, we welcome third party critiques of our quality system. This is done through certifying organizations (such as ISO), testing organizations (such as CE or PED), and customer audits.

People are vital to quality

Our employees are trained upon hiring and continuously trained as new work instructions are created, or after a certain amount of time has elapsed. In fact, we are revising our training matrix this month to ensure that our management team. One of the goals of the new matrix is to ensure we have cross-training across the organization and continuity in all departments. Another goal is to hold our managers responsible to ensure that their employees are properly trained, and each person is following a personal growth path.

Using technology to advance our quality and innovation

In our quality department, as well as the rest of the company, we put a large emphasis on technology. We understand that in order to be competitive in today’s markets, we not only need to utilize the technology available but also be a driving force for technology. That sometimes means being the guinea pig for trying out new technology on the market. We are currently investigating advanced technology that will digitally inspect microscopic surface qualities. Imagine if this technology was applied to critical valve seat and able to predict leakage results based on this….Amazing!

As a company, we realize that quality is not just determined by design, or how well it is manufactured, or even how well it is packaged. Rather, it is a combination of all these things and without any one of them, quality is compromised.