When making our components for the space industry there is no room for errors. That is why we have the best people on the task to ensure that each component is produced to perfection with attention to even the smallest detail. To give you an idea of what goes on in our production facility, we asked our Chief Quality Controller & ESA inspector, Susanne Poulsen, to provide some insight and describe a typical day at the production facility in Asnaes, Denmark.
Susanne is responsible for controlling every aspect of the production. This means that every time a component leaves one workstation to go to the next, Susanne controls that the component reaches the desired quality standards expected from the procedure made at the station at hand. This way we can catch potential errors throughout the production and better the component before handing it over to the next workstation.
There is no brief way to explain the procedure that space components go through when an order lands with us. With the illustration beneath, it should become evident to anyone that nothing is left to chance.
As illustrated, each workstation has its unique purpose and every component is controlled to verify that it has the highest possible quality before it is transitioned to the next station and ultimately delivered to the customer.
To emphasize the severity and illustrate by example how thorough our production facility is, an order of two space units can potentially have to go through 47 touch points in our production setup.
Our production consists of 35 extremely skilled workers who all share the same goal - to produce high-quality and flawless components for the space industry. The workers at our Asnaes production have been with us for several years, some even celebrate their 40th anniversary with us this year. We do everything to create a nice and welcoming work environment for our employees.
Our Chief Quality Controller, Susanne, shares her personal experience of working at Flux, and there is no doubt that she strives to stay with us for many more years to come.
Perhaps the diverse range of people contributes to the atmosphere at our production. The employees in our production all come from different educational backgrounds and have had various work experiences beforehand. However, they are all extremely talented at what they do. Commonly, we say that to work with the production of components you have to unleash your inner nerd as this type of work requires extreme concentration and patience. And to do that, you have to embrace the industry and the field to continuously stay driven. Luckily, that has always been the shared attitude amongst our employees.
In general, each worker is fixed on their area of expertise, however, we have multiple employees who are certified in various areas of production. This way, we assist each other in the production department to accommodate busyness and attend to the areas that have the largest workload to ultimately ensure our customers' security in supply.
At Flux, we do internal certifications of our employees to make sure that they are certified at working according to our quality standards and to guarantee that our components can withstand the harsh environment in the space applications that they are intended for.
We stay up to date on the most current quality arrangements in the industry and re-educate our employees every second year in theory and practice to ensure that all knowledge and procedures reflect the present industry standards. To know the industry standard and practice, our Product Assurance Manager, Janni Andersen, joins a course in the UK yearly where she gains insight into the newest procedures which she subsequently presents to the department of production at our internal courses.
In other words, we document everything we do. This way, we can always track our procedures and illustrate what actions took place on the production of a specific order. This documentation is stored for 15 years as a safety standard, to ensure that every single component is traceable. This is particularly important when working with the space industry. This way, manufacturers can always track the location, history, and application of any Flux component throughout their lifecycle. This is a standard procedure of sub-suppliers, in case integrated parts and components malfunction or become defective.
We further keep documented production standards which ensures that we are completely aligned in the way we produce components, and further facilitates the onboarding procedure of potential new talent.
Even though we make components that typically surround Jupiter and the sun, we value the importance of being down-to-earth and believe that a workplace will perform its best when the employees can be themselves. This means that there is always time to share laughs and stories from our private lives. This way we enjoy coming to work every day and stay top-motivated to produce quality components for one of the most demanding industries.
Our Chief Quality Controller, Susanne Poulsen, shares how she finds it difficult to explain what she does for a living to her friends and family due to the technicalities of her work. This makes it even more relevant to have a good collegial bond with the people you work with.