At Acorn Aluminium, quality and compliance are more than afterthoughts. Operational competency is embedded throughout its entire process – from design and fabrication through to picking, quality control and dispatch – to deliver a product and service you can trust.
As regulations tighten and financial pressures rise, last-minute inspections alone aren’t enough to ensure operational competency in the design, manufacture and installation of aluminium facades and fenestration systems.
The entire process, from design to delivery, must be subject to control and discipline to ensure full compliance, reduce rework and prevent costly site issues before products leave the factory, ensuring quality is built in from the very start.
At Acorn Aluminium, this approach is integral to every stage of its design and manufacture operation, with particular attention paid to the middle of the process, where errors often occur.
Checkpoints in place
One of the most common pinch points in any manufacturing environment is interdepartmental handover. Drawings can be interpreted differently and without effective communication, small misunderstandings can snowball into expensive setbacks.
“Design intent is critical, but equally important is how that intent is carried through processing, manufacture and installation,” explains Craig Key, Operations Manager at Acorn Aluminium.
“We’ve done a lot of work recently, across the board, to ensure that what’s drawn is followed through into our processing, manufacture, and install teams.
“We’ve put checkpoints in place so that once information reaches our processing team, it goes back through a design sign-off. That ensures we’re not mis-communicating between teams and that we’re putting the right products in the right places, on the right projects.”
By formalising these checkpoints, Acorn protects the integrity of the approved design. Every stage of the process is set up to confirm understanding before work proceeds, reducing ambiguity.
Control and discipline
Further down the line, errors can easily occur if processes are not tightly managed across departments.
To address this, Acorn has taken its checkpoint system a step further, by aligning fabrication lists directly with controlled pick lists. These lists feed into the warehousing team, where each component is selected exactly as specified for its specific project and phase.
“All our fabrication lists go into pick lists,” Craig explains. “They go into our warehousing team, and each element is picked to the exact specification as ordered for that individual phase of requirement. It ensures we don’t put the wrong things on the wrong sites, and that we stay true to our drawing and design intent.”
With each component traceable and verified before it reaches site, this disciplined approach significantly reduces the risk of product substitution, misallocation or cross-department confusion.
A stronger sign-off
The strengthening of Acorn’s sign-off process has also provided full accountability at each handover stage, ensuring that the next department or team member in the chain is working from verified information.
“It’s very easy to interpret a drawing in one or two different ways,” says Craig. “If we don’t communicate and hand it over thoroughly, we put ourselves at risk. Implementing a more robust sign-off is a big part of our effort to ensure we’re compliant.”
By embedding formal approval stages between departments, Acorn reduces the risk of assumption-based mistakes and reinforces collective responsibility for quality and compliance.
With a digital ‘end-of-line’ quality control system to verify all products before dispatch, Acorn is already moving towards ‘in-line’ quality control checks implemented earlier in the manufacturing process to further reduce rework and risk.
Identifying issues early
“We currently use an online platform to carry out end-of-line QC and check all products before they leave the door,” Craig explains. “This gives us a clear indication that what we’re making matches fully with the original intent.
“What we’re looking to do next is move that QC further back into in-line checks. That way we capture issues as early as possible and minimise any potential rework.”
By weaving a system of control, accountability and verification throughout processing, fabrication, picking and dispatch, Acorn is delivering high-quality products and exceptional customer service as standard, achieving the best possible outcomes for its partners.
This translates to fewer setbacks on-site, improved programme certainty, reduced risk, and ultimately ensures that Acorn will get it ‘right first time’.
For more about Acorn Aluminium, please call 0115 928 2166, email [email protected], or visit www.acornaluminium.com.