Walt Wear, the Quality Control Manager for Ipsen, is looking out for the customer every day. “We’re the team that gets to start the equipment for the first time,” Wear explained, “much of the work our team does is similar to what our field service team does. Our job is to find and fix any issues, problems, or errors long before the furnaces ever find their way into the customer’s shop.”
Seventeen years ago, after working for a customer that operated Ipsen furnaces, Wear began his Ipsen journey as a quality control technician. His first months were dedicated to learning about Ipsen’s products and processes. “I was always the guy in school that gravitated toward the shop classes. My first job was as a maintenance technician at a food processing plant. I’ve always been in this line of work.”
After working at Ipsen for a couple of years, keeping up with the growing demands, Wear found opportunities to advance through the ranks. He earned a promotion to supervisor, then in 2012 to his current role, where he leads a team of six technicians at the Ipsen Vacuum Technology Excellence Center in Cherry Valley.
Catch and Release
Furnaces are incredibly complex pieces of machinery that are relied on to process millions of high-precision parts for thousands of companies across dozens of industries every day. Before Ipsen ships a furnace, every last wire, bolt, and valve needs to be checked and tested, making sure the customer’s customizations meet specifications. In the first inspection of these systems that contain thousands of parts, “we might discover around 30 items to address per furnace,” Wear said. By catching issues during quality inspection, Ipsen ensures that customers are more likely to have their furnaces in production immediately following installation. “Thorough quality inspections ensure that Ipsen maintains an excellent reputation with our customers,” Wear said.
Whether inspecting vendor supplied components, tracing crossed wires, or taking inventory of customer-requested add-ons, the issues the team encounters can vary in complexity. “If my team can solve the problem in five minutes or less, we’ll take care of it. A mislabeled wire, a minor switch issue, a simple assembly mistake.” Most issues are reported to assembly or engineering, based on what needs attention. “But on the rare occasions when we encounter a real head-scratcher, we can get everyone involved,” Wear explained.
That’s the advantage of catching issues before the final furnace leaves the Ipsen shipping dock – the ability to review a furnace with the original designers, assembly staff, and engineers. By collaborating with the engineering team, reviewing issues with the assembly team, or communicating with the field service team, the quality department can spot trends and correct problems while the furnace remains in-house.
“Quality inspection is a very important process. Because of what we do, we’re confident that customers will get what they ordered,” Wear said.
Delivering Quality Efficiently
Ipsen Sales Teams coordinate furnace delivery timelines, including a set timeframe for quality inspection. “We have a checklist for each furnace that, printed out, is about thirty pages long,” Wear explained. “Each item gives the technician a task, and they’re asked to initial and date the checklist when the task passes inspection.”
The complexity and size of the furnace will determine the amount of time the quality department will need to inspect and release a furnace. This timeframe may be just a week or so for a standard furnace, but as customers add options and non-standard specifications, that time in quality may increase significantly. For example, a TITAN H6 that’s sold to a standard spec might have 50 hours of inspection time budgeted. However, “a recent vertical furnace that was nearly three stories tall and very customized had 400 hours allocated for inspection, and we used every minute of it,” Wear recalled.
Thankfully, the quality department can get an early start on furnaces as systems are installed and checked off. “Rarely do we start on a ‘complete’ furnace. Most often we’ll get involved even before some components have been received. For example, if the molybdenum hangers haven’t yet been delivered, there’s still quite a lot of work that we can do prior to ever heating up the furnace. As soon as the remaining parts have been delivered and installed, we can complete our testing,” Wear said.
The quality department can also ensure that customers are getting a furnace that’s ready to meet strict AMS2750 standards. A temperature uniformity survey can be requested by the customer to be included in the final inspection process.
“I love the problem-solving aspect of this job,” Wear explained. “When there’s something that’s genuinely strange, that’s when we can get everyone together and get the think tank going. Start with the easy stuff, rule that out, and keep going until we find the root of the problem. In the end, our customer receives a better product because of what we do.”