Quality

Quality may be hard to define, but in our market sector it is of the utmost importance, therefore we have developed a comprehensive quality assurance system which is compliant with ISO9001:2008. Most of our customers are OEMs making machines for use in demanding industrial sectors. The pressures this imposes on an exhaust system supplier like Blackthorn include the following:

If an exhaust system fails or is unreliable, the resulting downtime costs the end user money. Bearing in mind that many end users operate their machines for 2500 hours a year or more, the quality of the exhaust system needs to be extremely high.
OEMs generally operate lean production systems, which mean that if exhaust components don’t arrive on time, this can quickly bring a production line to a standstill.
Our customers’ designers squeeze more and more components into each machine but also want to improve aesthetics and driver visibility. This means we have to achieve the maximum possible in the space we are allotted (and if the products we supply are a few millimetres different from the drawing, they won’t fit).
Many of our customers have very diverse product ranges, and a production run of a given product might only be in single figures. This may necessitate the exhaust system being made by hand, but nevertheless it still needs to agree to the drawing. Taken together with reduced product life cycles another result is that we need to be able to keep efficient control of numerous drawings and revisions.
Frequently parts of the exhaust systems we supply are highly visible after installation, and must neither let down the overall appearance of the machine nor present a burn hazard to the operator.

Against this backdrop we believe that the most important factors in quality are design, inspection and administration.