Engineering Quality Into Every Project

Flavia del Vecchio is Quality Technician at Universal Wolf – leaders in complex metal fabrication

As a Quality Technician at Universal Wolf, I have been able to pursue my longstanding passion for engineering. After a number of years working in Brazil’s manufacturing sector, I decided to pursue quality control as a career, first at our sister company Tharsus and now at Universal Wolf. While no one in my family comes from a manufacturing background, I have always had strong attention to detail and great organisational skills, which have helped me in my day-to-day work, ensuring that we always produce high-quality products.

Within the quality assurance and inspection department, we have a fantastic team. Each one of us is better at something than everyone else, so we all have our areas of expertise. Everyone understands how important it is to collaborate, talk to each other and ask for advice as we work. And when one person needs support, we always have each other’s back.

Precise and Accurate

In quality assurance, we are experts at precision and accuracy. There are many thorough processes involved in each project. It’s not just finding out something and then building it. Quality processes and systems are infused in our work. We keep these processes as user friendly as possible. In other organisations, these processes can become very complicated with forms and procedures that end up being left aside. At Universal Wolf, our user-friendly processes make it easier to adhere to the rules which also speeds up the process of training new people.

At Universal Wolf, we not only have excellent quality processes, we also have a fantastic range of quality equipment at our disposal, from spot welders to lasers, that ensure we always get the job done right.

Working Better and Smarter

Beyond physical equipment, Universal Wolf has a great ethos of working better and smarter. To ensure we are always learning and improving, we have an annual evaluation of our processes. As a result, we recently introduced Statistical Process Control (SPC) in the laser area, which saves a lot of inspection time.

Another one of the reasons many of our partners continue to choose Universal Wolf is our team spirit. Customers know that every member of the team will be passionately engaged in the project to deliver the best results and get the job done.

The Pack Mentality

That’s why the pack mentality is vital. As we have such a wide range of skills and expertise – from welding to quality control – we make sure that we all have a good understanding of what it is that each department does. This is particularly necessary when we have a large multi-faceted project as we will all help each other and have each other’s backs. It’s about working together and getting the best out of each person. That’s how you deliver real quality.

One of the projects that recently demonstrated our pack qualities was the NHS hospital beds project. In response to the COVID crisis, we worked non-stop to design and build 260 beds for the Nightingale Hospital in just ten days. It’s a great example of the power of team spirit because although we had very little to work with, everyone came together to deliver the project successfully against a very tight deadline. It’s testament to the strength and integrity of the people here at Universal Wolf because we all wanted to give our best to help people – not for profit or personal achievement — but because it was the right thing to do. It speaks to the ability and passion of our team, and it is why Universal Wolf really is a top quality business that delivers great work that matters.

About Universal Wolf: www.universalwolf.com