United Intelligence (Jinan) Certification Achieves Another Success, Participates in Guiding the Quality Improvement Project for Small and Micro Enterprises Recognized as an Outstanding Case

From March to June 2021, the company was invited to participate in the "Small and Micro Enterprise Management Improvement Activity" in Hedong District, Linyi City. During this process, quality management experts and technical experts were dispatched multiple times to connect with more than a dozen small and micro enterprises for management docking, diagnose the current status of quality management in small and micro enterprises, hold discussions, select management improvement topics, formulate management improvement activity plans, and guide enterprises to carry out quality management improvement activities. Among them, the project "Optimizing the High-Frequency Quenching Process to Improve Product Quality" of Linyi Henggong Machinery Equipment Co., Ltd. was selected as an excellent case by the Linyi Market Supervision Bureau. Below, we share this excellent case with everyone:

1. Company Introduction

Linyi Henggong Machinery Co., Ltd. (referred to as Linyi Henggong) is located west of Dazhaojia Village, Zhengwang Town, Hedong District, Linyi City, with a registered capital of 5 million RMB. The company mainly engages in the production and sales of construction machinery parts, wholesale and retail of construction machinery and parts. The company has 190 employees, an annual revenue of 100 million RMB, and mainly produces excavator chassis idler wheels and drive wheels.

To improve the company's management level, Linyi Henggong Machinery Co., Ltd. has established and operated the ISO 9001 Quality Management System since 2018. Through the establishment of the quality management system, the company has truly felt that the effective operation of the quality management system is an effective way to achieve corporate strategy, and hopes to continuously improve the established quality management system to achieve continuous improvement in the company's quality management level.

2. Urgent Quality Management Issues to be Solved by the Company

Linyi Henggong Machinery Co., Ltd. hopes to gradually move from startup to industrialization step by step through the effective operation of the quality management system, and to reach new stages of development. For long-term development, the company is committed to becoming a benchmark and model in the field of construction machinery parts production and application technology, achieving the goal of occupying the market with high-quality projects and winning customer trust. The company continuously learns from advanced concepts in quality management at home and abroad, enhances correct understanding and in-depth comprehension of standardization, and integrates the systematic approach of the quality management system with business management. From March to June 2021, our company was entrusted by the Hedong District Branch of the Linyi Market Supervision Bureau to provide an opportunity for the company to comprehensively improve its quality management level. The company expects to further strengthen personnel quality awareness and refined management of key business processes through this action, to achieve stable product quality and continuous improvement of customer satisfaction, and to help realize the company's innovation and development plan.

The company raised the most urgent problem to be solved currently: the quality defect of "idler wheel cracks" occurring frequently.

3. Experience and Practices in Building the Company's Quality Management System

1. Conduct thorough data statistics and analysis

To carry out quality improvement work well, Linyi Henggong established a special working group for quality management system improvement, clarifying the responsibilities of personnel at all levels. By systematically reviewing the responsibilities and authorities of various departments, existing rules and management documents, main product or service processes and key quality control points, quality analysis reports or economic operation reports, the types of current product quality defects were comprehensively analyzed:

2. Combine professional technical breakthroughs with active participation of all employees to improve product quality

To fully leverage the power of all employees and foster a sense of "ownership" responsibility, everyone fulfills their duties in system management. Employees in different positions are required to learn job operation standards and technical requirements to reduce quality defects caused by operational errors; meanwhile, technical, production, process, and quality inspection personnel jointly participate in formulating test plans to verify the relationship between process parameters and product quality defects.
In this improvement action, our company's heat treatment expert Zhang Xiping personally guided the enterprise in improving the heat treatment process of the idler wheel; three people including national registered auditor Wei Xingming organized the company to conduct quality improvement and quality management enhancement training, systematically studied the small and micro enterprise mechanical industry improvement guide documents, understood the deeper connotation of quality standards, and formed a clear idea for the overall quality improvement work of small and micro enterprises. The quality management system standards were simplified and popularized, enabling personnel at all levels of the enterprise to further understand the application of quality management system standards in specific work.

3. Strict control to ensure key process planning and implementation are in place

To ensure product quality, starting from strengthening quality management and control of various process steps such as casting, forging, machining, and heat treatment, a systematic review found more than 10 issues including process documents, R&D and production process control, among which 2 involved optimization of key process steps, such as: the idler wheel's induction quenching device's profiling sensor is connected to the heating unit through a feeding mechanism, transforming a full-ring sensor into two half-ring sensors, eliminating the need for a flipping mechanism, reducing equipment complexity and flipping waiting time; this also solved the problem of cracks caused by quenching in the idler wheel; through process improvement in the casting step: replacing the "water glass sand shell making process" with the "silica sol binder and shell making process" not only cleaned the production site but also reduced casting defects such as sand holes, cracks, etc.

Based on past quality target achievement and standard requirements, the company promptly revised process parameters, and according to the "Process Change Control Procedure," conducted process confirmation and control for changes in key and special processes, performing confirmation and risk assessment from six aspects: personnel, equipment, materials, methods, environment, and inspection. At the same time, the inspection management of products in key production processes was further strengthened, and monitoring requirements for process parameters of casting, machining, heat treatment, and other processes affecting final product quality were enhanced, achieving comprehensive control of the production process and ensuring stable and continuously compliant final product quality.

4. Quality Improvement Results

Through expert breakthroughs and full participation, everyone's quality awareness and work enthusiasm have greatly improved. Through learning operation standards and technical skill competitions, the operational skills of frontline employees have significantly improved, and process technicians' enthusiasm for learning scientific knowledge has reached an unprecedented level. Their attitudes toward process design, process verification, and quality control have become more scientific and rigorous, with greater emphasis on product testing work.

After more than three months of process improvement and standardized management, the company's casting defects such as porosity, shrinkage cavities, sand holes, slag holes, and underfill in the idler wheel were reduced by 46%; high-frequency quenching crack defects in the idler wheel were reduced by 78%, saving the company over 1 million RMB in quality losses.

5. Insights

For small and micro enterprises, how to achieve better and faster development in an environment of constantly changing markets and increasing customer demands is well illustrated by the case of Linyi Henggong Machinery Co., Ltd.: based on the characteristics of the organization's products, applying the thinking and methods of the quality management system, focusing on product quality improvement to reduce quality losses; using quality management system tools to continuously deepen standardized management of key process steps, ensuring that the final product quality meets and exceeds customer expectations.

United Intelligence (Jinan) Certification Co., Ltd.
Small and Micro Enterprise Quality Improvement Project Leader: Wei Xingming