Making Quality Work for You

Faced with rising steel prices and increasing standards of quality control, the automotive industry is reexamining its factory-floor operations in an effort to improve yields and lower costs. Cleanliness in the manufacturing environment is becoming an ever-expanding responsibility of production managers. As components have been reduced in size, and design tolerances have been tightened, controlling the cleanliness of the manufacturing process has become an important factor in meeting performance specifications and controlling warranty costs.

Today manufacturers must be able to control cleanliness down to the micron size range. For manufacturing companies, defining contamination is relatively straightforward. Contamination is a particle, or debris, which is not inherent to the final assembly, component, or fluid being analyzed. Unfortunately, removing and controlling contamination is not as easy as defining it. A major difficulty in achieving cleanliness down to the micron range is determining how to monitor manufacturing debris at this level.

The first step towards achieving Advanced Quality Control (AQC™) is reliably identifying the individual particles as well as accurately sizing them. Various methods exist but lack the required sensitivity, accuracy, and precision to maintain adequate control over a process. In response to these new manufacturing trends, ASPEX® developed the only fully integrated solution for automatically detecting and classifying micron-size debris in 24/7 manufacturing and quality control operations.

The ASPEX® AQC™ is helping manufacturers achieve new standards of cleanliness and quality control. For example, leading manufacturers and their suppliers, including Ford, Mercedes, Bosch, and Cummins have installed ASPEX® AQC™ systems in their factories, improving performance and reducing warranty costs. From uncovering the hidden cause of component failure, to becoming an integral part of the long-term improvement in product quality, the ASPEX® AQC™ has become an indispensable tool for the quality manager faced with monitoring particle debris and cleanliness.