We have a Quality Control Department within the organization, with a senior person in charge and a few engineers.  Their job is to do multi-stage inspection of the incinerators being made by Haat.

Stage 1 - Raw materials and bought outs:

Raw materials supplied are always accompanied by test certificates from the manufacturers and yet, it is still the function of the QC department to have the material tested from an outside laboratory to confirm its conformance to the test certificates/specifications given.

Regarding bought-outs, visual inspection as well as testing is done by the engineers within the factory premises before acceptance.

Stage 2 - Work in progress:

The QC department will specify ‘Hold’ points for the Production Department, which means the Production Department cannot proceed further with the work, unless cleared by the QC department.  Take for example the rolled metal sheet to form a shell.  After rolling, it has to be tack-welded.  After this, the dimensions have to be checked to confirm these are as per the drawings.  Only then full welding can take place.  

Similarly a refractory lining mould is placed inside the shell before pouring of the refractory.  Verification of the dimensions of the mould vis-à-vis inner dimensions of the shell will ensure that the correct thickness of the refractory is being poured.

Stage 3 - Painting:

It is the job of the QC department to check whether the outer surface of the incinerator to be painted is blasted to the requirements of NACE 2½ standards.  If it is not, they have to re-blast and once it is done, painting is taken up where the wet film thickness as well as the dry film thickness is measured by the QC department before the painting section can say their job is completed.

Stage 4 - Curing: 

It is the responsibility of the QC department to complete refractory dry out before finish painting is taken up.  This is done over a period of 5 days with varying temperatures every day and it is a 24x5 job.  In the case of conventional refractories, this will cause a reduction in the strength of the lining.  In the case of our refractory, the reverse happens because the strength increases with curing and even more when the incinerator is working at high temperatures.  This is the speciality of the lining.  Due to this, the performance and life of the refractory of the incinerator is considerably more.

Stage 5 - Final inspection:

After painting is completed in all respects with no missing areas and the outer dimensions are as per the drawing and within tolerance limits, a run test is carried out to determine the performance of the incinerator in terms of capacity, emission, pressure of the chamber and so on.  The run test is conducted for a period of eight hours.  After this and once the system cools, it is cleaned and made ready for packing and any possible third party inspection.

The QC department is to ensure the incinerator manufacture is done as per the Inspection and Test Plan, whether insisted upon by the client or not, and in the process, there can be a conflict between production, projects and quality functions. This is the general rule.

In our case, however, all departments are happy to welcome the inspection by QC department because they know very well only with timely inspection can we produce quality incinerators and satisfy the buyer.

This is the reason why Haat has more than 600 installations in over 40 countries of the world.