There is no single factor responsible for Victory's enhanced ability to manufacture refrigeration equipment so durable and reliable that the company's entire line is currently covered by the category's first two-year warranty. Instead, according to Jeff Bauman, Victory's Manager of Quality & Technical Service, the ongoing improvement in Victory's build quality has resulted from the company's willingness to listen and respond to line employees, suppliers, channel partners and end-users to provide more robustly engineered products for today's "slammed" operations.

"We've tried to take a lot of little actions recently to upgrade our assembly practices, component reliability and part-failure rate," Bauman remarked. "For example, we've encouraged open recommendation sessions on the shop floor among line employees, supervisors, product managers and department heads as part of our continuous improvement process. One result of this effort has been greater quality control and more accountability, as final inspectors now test every cabinet's performance and sign off on the results before the equipment is allowed to leave our Cherry Hill, NJ, factory."

In addition, Bauman noted, Victory's Quality Control department staff now randomly inspect examples of all finished products, performing spot checks and pulling back any units that don't operate as expected. Auditors then meet with assembly supervisors to report their findings and work out solutions, whether problems have occurred in production, design, tooling or assembly. "It is a much more cooperative process than we used to have, and it is working," Bauman stated. "Our warranty costs as a percentage of sales declined notably in 2005, which gave us the quality foundation on which to base our new two-year coverage."

Victory's Jeff Bauman (left) and Tim Onions team up to manufacture refrigeration equipment so durable and relible it's backed up by a 2-year warranty.

Tracking all warranty reports has provided another effective quality control metric for Bauman and his colleagues, as findings are now analyzed according to model types, serial numbers and specific problems. Bauman and Victory's Technical Services personnel also regularly review service records along with co-workers from Engineering and Assembly, so all identified concerns can be discussed in common and solutions reached by consensus. "Based on these records and reports, we can prepare to resolve a quality problem with an actual change in shop-floor procedures," he pointed out. "We don't just put a patch over something."

To help keep Victory's quality continuously on the rise, Bauman revealed that he and allied department heads are now working with component vendors to test all of their products against reliability standards required to ensure that they will perform as expected throughout the two-year life of their warranty and beyond. In addition, all Victory refrigeration charging systems were refurbished this year to improve their dependability, and an assessment is now underway of all other refrigeration components to determine if any need further strengthening or upgrades.

"Our goals for 2006 are to support the new two-year warranty with the most durable products in the refrigeration category and to continue our improvement process in terms of assembly efficiency, serviceability and component performance," Bauman explained. "Victory raised the bar for quality control and performance in 2005. We're going to do all we can to make sure that bar stays just as high or goes even higher this year."

For more information, visit Victory Refrigeration's web site at www.victory-refrig.com