Insights into quality assurance from an interview with… Thomas Zeitelhofer.
Dipl. Ing. Thomas Zeitelhofer is Deputy Head of Quality Assurance at Traktionssysteme Austria.
About TSA (Traktionssysteme Austria)
Traktionssysteme Austria is the leading manufacturer of electromechanical drives for rail and road commercial vehicles with a company history dating back to 1960. TSA’s range of services includes the design and construction, manufacture, testing and delivery of customized products – from individual components to fully integrated drive solutions and after-sales support. Traction motors and generators based on asynchronous and permanent magnet technologies as well as final drives are part of TSA’s core business.
The importance of quality assurance in industrial companies.
Quality assurance is an indispensable driver of quality awareness and quality culture in industrial companies and ensures that high-quality manufactured products meet customer requirements. Unlike quality control, the focus is not just on the product, but on all activities and processes in the company and whether these are in line with the defined quality objectives.
The importance of quality assurance at TSA is reflected in the doubling of the number of employees in the department. The team deals with production-related and digitalization issues as well as strategic and administrative work in connection with quality assurance.
The professional field of quality assurance is becoming more and more relevant and is also constantly changing, which is why we would like to give you a detailed insight into the work of quality assurance together with Thomas Zeitelhofer from TSA.
Quality assurance at TSA.
A few years ago, quality assurance at TSA was still primarily based on paper, but today much of it is digital: the workstations in production are equipped with monitors and tablets. Dashboards for data evaluation can be updated quickly during production thanks to structured digital data acquisition, and digital checklists replace manually typed Excel lists and tedious email correspondence. The digitalization measures in the quality assurance department that were implemented with Testify are also being rolled out to other departments and internationally.
In this article, we delve into the work of quality assurance and also show you what development steps TSA is taking and what industry-specific features there are for quality assurance in the transportation industry.
This is how production and quality assurance at TSA start the day…
Contrary to what the world of norms, compliance and standards might suggest, there is no “typical working day” for Thomas Zeitelhofer and his team. Their working day is constantly changing, with new topics and tasks coming up every day.
What usually takes place every day, however, are store floor meetings and the production tour.
- Daily meetings take place every morning in all production departments. Depending on the topics and requirements, quality assurance is also involved here. The meetings usually last a quarter of an hour. The day’s topics, such as production plans, material problems and anything else, are discussed over morning coffee. A look is taken at the data: The current status is immediately visible to the team. Measures for the day or the week are then derived from this. Done.
- Thomas Zeitelhofer’s daily tour of production also gives him an insight into day-to-day business and allows him to see what is happening in production and whether there are any problems.
Progress dashboards, which are based on data collected by Testify, show how far the individual assemblies are in the production process and thus provide a transparent overall picture of the product to be manufactured.
Digital workplace: networked production employees on the store floor.
The workstations in production are digital. When you enter TSA’s production area, you can see that all workstations are equipped with monitors and mobile devices.
A few years ago, there were still paper drawing folders on the workstations that had to be maintained by the workers. Now, workers can access the current production documents digitally directly from their workstations. The advantage: the latest version is always called up and the time required for the manual process (revising, printing, delivering) is saved.
Every employee can directly access drawings of the assembly, production logs and checklists. All relevant information is therefore available at the click of a mouse. This means that every production employee can record and log measured values directly on site in Testify checklists using a small PC or tablet.
This is what quality assurance on the store floor looks like in practice: Digital checklists in Testify accompany the production process.
Working through checklists plays an important role in quality assurance. The checklists are completed directly on site at the workplace “on the side”, e.g. recording serial numbers or ok/not ok checks.
The production employees record checks. And the quality assurance employees then carry out the final check of the log.
The structure of the digital checklists is workplace-based. Each workstation has its own page. Thanks to a good breakdown, everyone knows exactly what they have to do and what needs to be processed in series.
This way of working also allows a much higher level of detail than before. This is also advantageous for complaints management: if a component is deformed, processing can be quickly assigned to the employee responsible. This employee then carries out further checks or re-measurements, takes photos and enters additional information.
A look at the big picture: How quality assurance with Testify works throughout the supply chain.
TSA’s quality assurance starts even before the materials arrive at the company: At the supplier. Inspection planning is carried out, incoming goods inspections are performed, components are measured and documents are checked. Good cooperation with the purchasing department is also important here.
Further down the production line, the various quality gates play an important role, such as weld seam inspections or measuring machine measurement of stators.
Quality assurance and production are closely intertwined. Logs are created for each engine to ensure the traceability of each individual component. For this reason, the production employees are actively involved in recording the production of assemblies.
There are “quality gates” between the individual production steps. These quality gates ensure that checks are carried out correctly and that the next production step is only released if the quality of the upstream production step is assured.
Before the motor is delivered, a final check (outgoing goods inspection) is carried out to ensure that all requirements according to the drawing have been met.
The results can be viewed in the outgoing goods dashboard. A link takes you to the individual logs with the photos. This means that QA can view the photos of how the product was shipped. This gives the company full transparency as to how the machine was assessed, what was checked and what the respective machine looked like on delivery.
These industry-related challenges characterize the work of quality assurance at TSA.
The traceability of individual components, material certificates, etc. is an issue that is essential to the way quality assurance works at TSA. Even after many years, it must still be possible to determine which component has been installed, which is why detailed logging is essential.
TSA has various certifications and is therefore subject to very strict quality guidelines. From the International Railway Industry Standard (IRIS) to ISO9001 and welding standards such as EN 15085-2 through to energy and environmental certificates.
With ISO/TS 22163, TSA has traceability periods of 30 years!
Welding for machine vehicles is also strictly regulated. TSA also relies on Testify to ensure weld seam inspections. Thanks to digital checklists, detailed checks can be carried out and recorded at weld seam level.
“Unfortunately, this is very difficult to do on paper and the digital solution plays into our hands,” says Zeitelhofer. With the digital solution, the information can be read out quickly and easily – the company can therefore act much faster than before, when everything was still documented in paper form.
Digitization measures: Dashboards instead of emails, Excel lists and the like.
In recent years, Excel lists and emails have gradually been replaced by new digital solutions such as Testify. The main advantage of this is quick and easy access to up-to-date information and life data.
The quality assurance department has gradually replaced the manual process. For example, the data evaluation of outgoing goods inspections used to be a manual process in which information had to be entered manually in Excel. This is now a thing of the past with the digital checklists.
Sending the relevant information to the management was also time-consuming in the old process. Today, the management has access to the informative dashboards as required.
The QA department is committed to making information available at the click of a mouse instead of via long information channels. This is also reflected in the daily work: The QA department creates a user for all employees who need access to information. Role management controls whether the respective user can only view the checklists or also edit them.
This comprehensive insight and the query and evaluation options eliminate a huge amount of administrative work. E-mail traffic has been significantly reduced, as everyone can check Testify themselves and mail requests for logs or evaluations are no longer necessary.
Roll-out of digitalization measures at other locations and departments.
In order to drive forward digitalization at other locations, Thomas Zeitelhofer trains additional employees in the use of the Testify software. The trained key users introduce the tool independently at the respective locations. In the coming months, Testify will be introduced at the production site in Bosnia, where the production step for coil installation is outsourced, and at assembly partners in America.
Testify is also being rolled out to other departments. The software is already being used extensively in lean management. As a next step, the Health-Safety-Environment (HSE) department will introduce the tool for environmental lists and safety tours in production.
The topic of dashboarding is also very important here. Thomas Zeitelhofer and his colleagues in the QA department work together with other departments to compile suitable evaluations.
Outlook: Trends and future developments.
According to Thomas Zeitelhofer, the ‘Track & Trace’ trend around engines is becoming increasingly important. This is because it is essential to know where the engine or component (in production) is at any given time. At TSA, this was solved with the checklist-based software, which is used in a structured and workplace-related manner.
This makes it possible to find out at any time where what was last processed, what the current status is and which processing step the engine is currently in.
The next digitization step in quality assurance at TSA is to map the data matrix codes (which can already be found on the production documents) on the components as well. This will probably work via ‘coded JSONs’, which can then be used to read out information such as batch numbers, expiration dates or revision statuses.
