Quality award for VCST
30 June, 2021
At VCST, we are leaders in our field. We got to that position and remain there thanks to hard, dedicated work and also a keen eye for quality. After all, delivering top-quality gears to our clients is the best way to show our expertise. Sometimes, that quality is formally recognised by one of our clients. As a matter of fact, last week we were awarded the 10 ppm award by DAF/Paccar for achieving less than 10 ppm over the course of 2020.
A story of continuous improvement
For DAF/Paccar, we produce engine gears for trucks and heavy-duty vehicles. As those gears contain timing marks, it is vital that they are of superior quality. Indeed, if they aren’t, there is a danger of the entire engine being destroyed. As such, the customer runs a 10 ppm programme with many of its suppliers to ensure that the former take constant steps for product improvement. Since 2016, VCST has been a part of the 10 ppm programme with both our plants in Sint-Truiden (Belgium) and Alba (Romania) producing gears for DAF/Paccar. By working hard each year on continuously improving the quality of our gears, we were able to bring down the ppm for DAF/Paccar until we got the confirmation recently that we have won the 10 ppm award for 2020 by achieving 6 ppm.
How did we do it?
Achieving and maintaining such a high standard for the quality of our gears is not an easy task. The most important step we undertake is to apply lessons learned. Whenever a complaint is made, we solve it and we also look if the same problem has occurred in different plants or at different production lines. The fact that we perform the final checks ourselves also helps us to react more quickly.
Aside from that, we have also implemented a scanning system. We found that most of the errors occurred in the final step of our production process: the final check, laser marking and the administrative as well as logistic processing of the parts. Indeed, in the past, that process went mainly manually, meaning that it was more prone to mistakes. Now the operator carries a scanner to register the bar code of the gear which immediately allows them to check every single part of the production process and whether they are dealing with the right item, if it’s going on the right pallet and whether the pallet is full or not. In fact, DAF/Paccar was so impressed with this system that they allowed Quality manager Stefan Coremans and Supply Chain manager Marleen Miguet to go and present it to them.
Winning this award has certainly been a team effort. We could not have done this without the dedication of every member of our team and therefore, we’d like to express our sincere gratitude to everyone involved in the DAF/Paccar project both in Sint-Truiden and in Alba! Also, our thanks go out to DAF/Paccar for presenting us with this award!
