Quality can appear to be a complex topic with opaque international standards, weighty pronouncements, weighty bureaucracy, and numerous experts and gurus. In the Industrial Automation, CNC Machine shop, and Government Contracting and Subcontracting arenas that Prairie West Design operates in, we develop and manufacture to customer’s specification. Our customers define what they want. Our job simply is to provide you what you specified.

The clearer and more comprehensive our customer’s specifications are, the better we can deliver what is wanted. Dimensional requirements can be defined using conventional dimensioning or dimensioning per ASME Y14.5M. We are comfortable with either method.

Per your specifications, the materials have to be right. The finishes have to be right. The dimensions have to be right. The quantity has to be right. The timing has to be right. The function has to be right. Verification of being right is just part of the process. Verification is necessary to know that the different aspects of the items are right. The absence of verification is assumption, which simply means not knowing.

Verification also means that if tools are used for verification, like measurement instruments, the tools have to be verified for the verification to be valid. This is why we have implemented ISO 10012, Measurement Management Systems, an industry standard for maintaining a measurement tools. Some customers want proof of compliance with certifications. Some do not. Either way is fine. Our job is to provide you what you specified.

In the Industrial Design arena where Prairie West Design also operates in, there are two customers to be aware of. The first is the direct customer, the entrepreneur, concept developer, or firm buying the development work. The second is the end customer, the customer that the direct customer is intending to sell the designed product to. The end customer often does not even know that they will someday want what is being developed. The direct customer knows what they want. In some cases, the direct customer is an expert on the intended market. In some cases they are not and may or may not have feedback on what the market or the end customer will want or accept. We support our direct customers incorporating what we know when the market is one we are experienced with, along with DFM to address the manufacturability and cost aspects of development.

You likely have seen the trope, Do it right the first time, and also likely have seen an opposing trope, Move fast and break things. Prairie West Design does not ascribe to either extreme. We do novel and ever changing things. We do not like breaking things. We do our best effort the first time, but understand that the first time may only be a learning experience. We are fine with do best first, learn, modify, do right. We give ourselves the right to make mistakes as long as we learn from them. Our job is to provide you what you specified, not to assure that the scrap bin is empty.

Dimensional Inspection

Prairie West Design has a separate, climate controlled quality lab for performing dimensional inspections. We have equipped the lab with an ever increasing collection of inspection tools. Our inspection tools include:

• Tesa Micro-Hite 3D CMM

• Traceable standards for calibration

• A large collection of measurement devices including calipers, micrometers, height gages, drop gages, and indicators

• Surface plates, squares, and blocks

• A large collection of of fixed gages including Gage pins, Thread Gages, Ring Gages, and Deltronic Pins.