Charleston Witnesses Quality Process Enhancement with VLC QMS

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The Company:
Charleston Metal Products is primarily a machine shop that’s been in business since 1946, specializing in the automotive, heavy truck, agriculture, fitting, and numerous other industries to supply vital products that are shipped worldwide. Over the years, they have expanded their capacities to fulfill the evolving needs of their customers. Screw machines are their primary strength, but their CNC, center-less grinding, and broaching credentials give them a remarkable standing to offer comprehensive machining services.

The Challenge:
They were facing issues with a multiplicity of home-grown and other purchased quality software. They wanted to condense all of that into a single platform for consistency and integration into their ERP and achieve higher controls over their quality control systems.

With some of their tools, they ran into performance problems. Sometimes, they would be able to manually manage things much faster than the system could handle. They could not even manage the number of data points which were being collected. So, there were quite a few limitations and having all these different tools that were disjointed was also a challenge.

Therefore, they were in a quest for a solution that would enable them to gradually replace all of their existing redundant systems. They had put together a requirement list for quality software for long-term value, easy integration with their business processes, and future scalability.

The Solution:
VLC’s Quality Management System software had become an optimal solution, which catered to their main need of seamlessness. Firstly, they had over a million data points going into their quality solution on a monthly basis. So, a large scale of data being collected every day was slowly being made manageable with VLC QMS.

Furthermore, an automated CMM empowered them to take a palette that could be used in the machine. They were able to put that into the CMM inspection and then use VLC QMS to seamlessly integrate those inspection points to provide SPC controls back to the machinist. This would help him get real-time feedback to quickly stop, pause, make the necessary adjustments and then pursue making a quality component.

Getting a new employee to learn five new quality software was arduous. They were able to go from that to just one quality software of VLC QMS that is easy to use but highly efficient, lightning-fast, and also meets all of their regulatory requirements. The all-digital quality of VLC QMS made their data easily accessible to every employee, eliminating the need for manual paperwork.

The Result:
Now, VLC QMS is a one-stop shop for all of Charleston’s inspection needs on their floor, and our software has helped them ease their work by leaps and bounds. The consistency, compatibility, and commonality that quality control essentially needs have been delivered by VLC QMS, thus making work easy and the employees at Charleston happy.