In today’s marketplace, meeting the unique requirements of all current and potential customers is hard. Quality assurance (QA) and control (QC) are essential tools to demonstrate that a product or service is reliable and high-quality.
Historically, QA and QC were focused almost exclusively on customer expectations in production. Circular Rubber demands the same high quality beyond its product and throughout its entire growing value chain. Circular Rubber strives to exceed current ‘best practices’ for process and product quality monitoring and has built a QA/QC framework with all stakeholders in mind. Collaboration with and input from all partners is crucial to both understanding and minimizing potential risks. Fruitful collaboration of this nature is only possible when open communication and dialogue are prioritized among all stakeholders, including management, engineering staff and quality personnel, with frequent touchpoints between these groups throughout all stages of production.
The Laboratory
Circular Rubber is operationalizing an on-site laboratory for feedstock testing, monitoring the devulcanization process and verifying finished product quality. The lab is designed to measure several key parameters relative to customer and market requirements. In-process monitoring and control, overall process stability, and ultimate end-product quality depend on reliable knowledge of these parameters.
Installation of 15 workstations at the commercial demonstration facility in Red Deer will support testing of four chemical and five mechanical properties at different stages of production. State-of-the-art testing and sample preparation equipment will be used to test these properties using standard methods from the rubber industry, ensuring compatibility with customer requirements and clarity of testing results. Semi-automated tools will be employed to ensure fast and accurate analysis.
Accurate and timely flow of information is essential to customer satisfaction. Customers’ trust in Circular Rubber’s product specifications will enable them to use reclaim in a variety of tire and non-tire applications, knowing the quality of their own feedstock is assured. Developing strong customer relationships further drives Circular Rubber’s mission of transforming the world’s rubber waste into value by integrating its reclaim into new products. A robust QA/QC framework is essential for understanding any non-conformances arising during production and proactively preventing any issues before reclaim reaches the customer.
