AllTube Engineering: Technological innovation to improve product quality (Part 1)

AllTube Engineering is a historic UK manufacturer of precision mechanical components. Currently the company is providing products for many other fields and industries such as agriculture, construction, trucking and railway.

Currently, hydraulic and pneumatic hoses are considered as the flagship products of AllTube Engineering. However, the manufacturing process is having a big bottleneck in the tolerance control problem because the inside of the pipe is difficult to measure. To solve this problem, the company has combined to use many new equipment with modern technology, at the same time strictly manage the output quality by standard management system.

“One big problem we had is that the installation of burrs like hydraulic pipes is not usually applied to new transport vehicles. Therefore, it is often difficult for us to order to design relatively long and complex hydraulic hoses in a confined space. In addition, they must not rub into areas such as the chassis or interfere with any part of the vehicle “, said Mr.Paul Fuller – Technical Director of AllTube.

To design such a pipeline, the company’s engineers need to build a 3D model of the product. The optimal 3D pipe framing is never easy. For example, bending a pipe with a small angle error at one end can lead to a few mm inaccuracy on the opposite end of a long pipe. Therefore, in order to meet challenging designs from customers, 3D models require strict requirements with tight geometry and dimensional tolerances. “To ensure that each manufactured hydraulic hose complies with the design requirements, we thoroughly test each product according to the regulations before sending them out”, Mr. Fuller stressed.

For the operation process, AllTube is currently using Quantum FaroArm to perform 3D machining steps. This device has passed the strict international certification for articulated arm coordinate meter – ISO 10360-12: 2016. Through the use of this new device, AllTube’s defect product quantity has been reduced. At the same time, the company has received fewer complaints about product durability than before.

For the quality control process, currently one of the company’s pipes are randomly inspected according to ISO 9001: 2015. Standards not only help AllTube ensure the quality of the output but also help the company reduce problems from internal causes. In particular, the improvement of ISO 9001: 2015 over the old versions is the approach to thinking based on risk. This means that the organization can identify factors that could cause its management systems and processes to deviate from its planned results, thereby putting in place preventive controls to Minimize negative impacts and make the most of the opportunity when it occurs. This is a huge step forward in AllTube Engineering’s long production apparatus.

(To be continued)

Productivity and Quality Office