A Conversation with Art Fletcher, Director of Quality, Bill Fricke, Director of Quality Systems
Quality is a term that many companies use to describe their products and services. But what is this thing called quality? Art Fletcher, Director of Quality, has been with the company for 40 years. Bill Fricke came to Harrison Steel in 2009 from GM, where he was a Senior Supplier Quality and Process Engineer. Art and Bill define what quality means at Harrison Steel.
Q. The first thing companies promise is quality. Does the word mean anything these days?
A. Quality is used to describe everything these days, whether it's a car or football recruit. So eyes are naturally going to glaze over if a company says quality without defining what quality is and what value is delivered to the customer. At Harrison Steel, quality relates to our castings and the processes used to produce castings. At the end of the day, quality is absolutely critical; if you don’t deliver a quality product or service you're toast.
Q. What does quality mean to Harrison Steel?
A. For us it means setting high expectations and meeting them everyday in all that we do. We set the expectation more than a decade ago when we first earned ISO 9001 certification. That was tough, but we wanted to prove that we were serious and our people, processes, and operations were on par with the best companies in the world. When you set high standards, hold people accountable to those standards and reward people for exceptional work, quality becomes more than a word, it becomes your culture.
Quality
At Harrison Steel, we relentlessly pursue quality in everything we do, everyday. It's something we invest in, work on, and ultimately deliver to each customer, whether it's a precision casting, on on-time delivery or report. We employ a wide range of quality initiatives to support our culture of continuous improvement. In the process, we have successfully minimized variability and elevated quality in our manufacturing processes. Six Sigma (six Black Belts), 8D, 5 Why, and Kaizen problem solving tools are employed to identify opportunities and strategies for improvement.
Quality assurance measures are built into every step of engineering and production. Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) teams help us successfully launch new castings and make engineering changes. Our casting tracking system identifies and follows every part that we make from door-to-door. Sophisticated, pre-production computer modeling is used to anticipate and avoid potential issues. After finishing, castings are subjected to magnetic particle inspections to identify surface defects. Lastly, the castings undergo rigorous inspections to verify customer specifications. These can include gamma ray/UT testing and ultrasonic wave testing to verify internal integrity and soundness. Electro optical testing verifies dimensions.
Our quality-related certifications include:
ISO 9001:2008
ABS Certified
Production and Technical Capabilities
