Automated quality inspection reduces rejection rate
Stevens Rowsell Ltd, based in Hastings, has recently purchased the latest FARO Gauge CMM portable arm and granite rolling cart as part of its continued quality initiative. The company has recorded a 70% growth in sales turnover since 2006 and has a consistent sub 1% product rejection rate.
The sub-contract sheet metal engineering and fabrication invested in the mobile arm because it provides the flexibility and control required to support the shop floor and quality department activities with fast, efficient and accurate first article and final inspection. Comprehensive reports and SPC statistical analysis can be generated with ease and the operational and administrative time savings have contributed towards increased productivity and improved on time delivery performance.
The arm has a working volume of 1.2m (48”), is accurate to 0.005mm (0.0002”) in accordance with ISO 10360-2, is CE certified and provides a cost effective, 3-dimensional gauge replacing conventional gauging devices with an expandable library of software gauging tools. High precision calliper, height gauge and micrometer measurements can be easily emulated facilitating checks on basic geometry, distances and angles with reduced operator error in a fraction of the time.
The FARO arm software platform provides professional looking and easy to read inspection reports, which are included with all customer delivery notes where requested and as standard for initial deliveries of new product. Using
the arm to produce inspection reports rather than the traditional hand written methods has radically reduced administration and paperwork time allowing the quality department to keep on top of its inspection workload and the need to provide fully dimensional reporting to its customers without
bottlenecking or holding up production.
Barry Douch states: ‘We have saved both time and money by replacing what can easily become a cluttered inspection area just by investing in this one tool, it does the lot. It allows us to measure parts almost anywhere in the business and is especially useful for measuring our larger assemblies in situ, which is a huge step forward in terms of our ability to drive inspection whilst getting our customers orders completed and delivered on time.’
In addition to the evident benefits that the FARO arm has provided the Quality & Inspection department, Stevens Rowsell’s Technical Manager Hugh Ross is also utilising the new tool to speed up and increase the capability of the company’s reverse engineering processes. His team of production engineers are using the Faro arm to check dimensions and angles of customer sample work pieces to ensure that their production drawings are dimensionally accurate.
The investment in quality is already paying dividends for Stevens Rowsell Ltd who have already reported reductions in the number of customer non conformances, operator paperwork errors and in the level of scrapped work.
