Colortrac boosts Quality Assurance

14 January 2008, 3:37pm

St Ives, Cambridgeshire, UK - 14th January 2008 - The leading wide format scanner innovater demands an unwavering focus on Quality Assurance!

Colortrac Ltd, the British developer and manufacturer of SmartLF wide format scanners and image acquisition software solutions, has appointed Kevin Zheng as Quality Assurance Manager at Colortrac Imaging Systems (SuZhou) Ltd, their Chinese subsidiary.

With innovation, leading edge performance and competitive pricing the cornerstone of its product philosophy, Colortrac is fully committed to establishing best-practice procedures that guarantee Quality Assurance throughout its SmartLF wide format scanner product range and corporate culture.

As the only large format scanner manufacturer to recognize the individual merits of both CCD (Charge Coupled Device) and CIS (Contact Image Sensor) image sensing technologies, Colortrac's distinctive SmartLF scanners provide unrivalled optimum professional solutions at a price AEC, CAD and GIS, etc, users can justify. SmartLF scanners cover every scanning application, from color reprographics artwork and maps to everyday grey scale or monochrome technical drawings and documents.

Kevin, a graduate of Lanzhou University of Science and Technology (Major in Mechanics, BSc in Engineering), brings nine years' professional experience in quality assurance to his new position. Before joining Colortrac, Kevin held a variety of quality management, inspection and standardization engineering positions, including three years as Quality Manager with UL-CCIC Co Ltd, a joint venture of Underwriters Laboratories, USA, the independent product safety certificator, and four years as Quality Supervisor with Philips Domestic Appliances (Suzhou) Co. Ltd.

Established in late 2005, Colortrac Imaging Systems achieved full compliance with ISO 9001:2000 on 7th September 2006 (Certificate No. 2608).

Colortrac Imaging Systems is responsible for sourcing components and producing electro-mechanical sub-assemblies for export to Colortrac's UK factory in St Ives where the SmartLF range of Gx 25 and Gx 42 (CCD) and Cx 40 (CIS) series scanners are built. Kevin's responsibility is to develop and embed a culture of quality within Colortrac Imaging Systems that ensures the benefits of best practices flow from China to the UK in the form of cost-effective, top quality components and sub-assemblies. He is enthusiastic about the challenge and the opportunity this presents.

"Colortrac Imaging Systems' goal is nothing less than Quality Excellence" Kevin says.

"The pursuit of Quality Excellence is unending. Our aim is to ensure that Colortrac products achieve the highest standards in terms of manufacturing quality, that all Colortrac customers receive the highest standard of service and support, and that both manufacturing quality and customer service and support are continually improved. There will always be room for improvement.

"Quality Excellence is a system issue requiring total team work. It is a corporate culture! It's not sufficient to focus only on shop floor assembly work. We need an integrated effort from the top-down, from each function and department in the production process, from each team and team member. It is the pursuit of System Excellence. In order to satisfy our SmartLF customers with the price and performance they expect, my job is to keep costs down through lean production and just-in-time purchasing while ensuring superb Colortrac performance with robust quality control.

"My job covers cross-functional, cross-organizational, cross-national boundaries - we have to cooperate with the UK factory as well. Due to the technical complexity of large-format CCD and CIS scanners, the purchasing of thousands of components from dozens of suppliers is a challenge whatever the size of the production run. We need to be on constant guard that our suppliers' standards do not slip. We have to extend our System Excellence to them so that we can ensure they consistently supply us with top quality components at the right prices at all times."

Since Kevin's appointment Colortrac Imaging Systems has made significant gains in addressing key quality assurance issues. With the recently received ISO 9001 Surveillance Audit and Factory Inspections from the Production Certification Organization Colortrac Imaging System's Quality Assurance program is up and running. It recently passed the ISO14001 Audit and expects to receive an ISO14001-compliance certificate soon.

"The seed of Quality Excellence has been planted among our staff and suppliers" says Kevin. Unsurprisingly for someone whose job it is to pursue excellence, Kevin spends his after work hours pursuing a part-time MBA (Master of Business Administration degree) at Soochow University.

Colortrac's Sales & Marketing Director, Peter de Winter-Brown, says

"Colortrac demands an unwavering focus on Quality Assurance.

"Colortrac implemented a distributed multi location / multi-source manufacturing strategy in 2004. This was mission critical to our success in achieving a SmartLF production strategy that delivered high performance wide format scanners at an affordable price, products that offer our customers excellent value for money.

"With our components and sub-assemblies being sourced from suppliers in China, the UK and elsewhere we recognized the need to update and improve our Quality System to ensure we met our customers expectations for product quality and reliability. Kevin's appointment as Quality Manager is part of a major international initiative within Colortrac to create an increased awareness of quality issues leading to the creation of a permanent culture of Quality Excellence in our staff worldwide."

www.colortrac.com

Geo: International