Quality assurance in Mexico
and all over the world has gone a long way, specially in the automotive
industry. Since it's beginnings to today's concepts such as Just
in Time and Six Sigma, where it's application allows having production
systems with a level of just a few parts per million of non conforming
product, minimum inventory and high productivity.
Within the last ten years
PARBO has maintained a constant growing rate, a renewal spirit
and continuous improvement, which allows us to compete and succeed
in today's global market.
In PARBO, in order to guarantee
our customers a high quality product, we pay maximum attention
to quality assurance on the different processes which yield our
rubber-metal and urethane-metal products.
Raw material selection is
carefully made to get the highest performance from all components.
In our quality assurance laboratory tests are made to raw materials
to make sure they comply with quality standards, and right there
ASTM tests are made in regular basis to control critical properties
from different rubber and urethane blends: hardness, tensile strength,
elongation, modulus, compression set deformation and changes in
all those properties because of aging. Vulcanization properties
are controlled by means of rheometries, which allow us to be sure
that the batch to be vulcanized complies with the process specifications.
To get constant development,
improvements for products and processes are proposed and analyzed.
Prototypes are made and pilot runs are done. Once those steps
are made in a satisfactory way, field tests are done in order
to finally release the product and offer it to the market. All
these steps are made with small batches in laboratory equipment
under controlled conditions.
Torque rod steel shafts
are manufactured on CNC machines in order to assure the required
finish and precision for automotive industry. The obtained tolerances
outstand original specifications. The great flexibility and productivity
of this kind of machines allow us to compete in today's international
markets.
The processes for different
kind of elastomers are made in modern machinery to obtain consistent
properties in the product: open roll mill, Banbury mixer, compression
presses, injection machines and automatic vulcanization production
lines.
Quality is managed in PARBO
by means of Statistic Process Control (SPC) to comply with standard
dimension and tolerances in machined parts.
It is specially important
to take care of weight and chemical composition for rubber and
urethane compounds before they are blended; it is constantly controlled
to assure the right properties on the final product. Audits are
made on regular basis to guarantee compliance on this particular
issue.
To obtain successful use
of the elastomer engineering properties, it is needed a deep knowledge
of its nature, its behavior as a building material and its operating
environmental limitations.
An elastomer is a macromolecular
material which can be stretched at room temperature and when released
approximately recovers its original shape and dimensions. Rubber
and urethane are elastomers which must be processed to be able
to use its physical properties as a material and function as a
shock absorber.
The importance of quality
assurance on our products' manufacturing systems becomes highly
relevant when we consider that the truck's suspension system has
been designed not only to give uniform driving conditions but
to keep front and rear axis aligned with the chassis. It's function
is to make sure that while operating, torsional forces are being
absorbed and the wheels keep in contact with the road surface
to transmit in an effective way the driving and braking forces,
besides damping those vibrational forces that affects the vehicle.
In this way PARBO assures
to manufacture for our customers world class quality rubber and
urethane suspension parts which allows us to be leader in Mexico
and export our products to more than ten countries in North, Central
and South America.
