Times are past when bathrooms were simply prefabricated units, when obnoxious bathroom colors, such as yellow, red, green, or blue, practically attacked anyone entering the room. Today, taking a shower or bath is associated with a sense of wellbeing and relaxation, in short, wellness.
That “good feeling” and the high quality of living that is associated with wellness can be traced back to a space that was once simply a small room for taking care of personal hygiene. Customers that are concerned with this space today, however, value the bathroom as highly as the living room or the kitchen. After all, it is has become just as important to feel comfortable here as in all the other areas of personal living space. The bathroom has also been transformed into the place where people try to recollect he energy at night that they have spent during their busy day.
Duscholux has recognized the high contribution the bathroom makes to an experience of superior quality of life. Duscholux started out with the production of collapsible shower doors in 1969. Since then, the company has developed into an international supplier of shower doors and acrylic bathtubs and leads the world market in this industrial sector. If you inquire at Duscholux what the company has to offer, you’ll find out a lot of useful information on shower doors and acrylic tubs and not just their water capacity or installation types. Duscholux works with individualized accessories as well as with special equipment to create space concepts which guarantee wonderful living experiences and produce a special comfort zone, in other words, a space for wellness.
With increasing customer demands Duscholux’s own demand for high performance and quality has grown as well. Today, the company offers over 500 different models, an expansive assortment of shower stalls and bathtubs which can be adjusted to satisfy individualized customer demands.
Numerous variations of a model may be manufactured on any given day, according to Dieter Stelker, supervisor for quality control. “We manufacture according to orders, which means that on any given day we may very well produce several hundreds of different models and on other days several series of identical tubs, at lot sizes of 100 and up. In order to reach these heights in production, Duscholux, operating since 1988 in Sandweiler near Luxemburg, creates production hubs utilizing state-of-the-art production procedures. This operating principle not only satisfies ever-increasing demand for individualized bath solutions but also allows for an efficient fabrication of serial products.
The quest for high performance and flexibility in the production of acrylic tubs represents a special challenge for QM-supervisor Stelker. Due to the individualized production, to satisfy custom orders, it is often impossible to manufacture a large batch at one time, and this makes controlling quality criteria that remain unchanged impossible. “While for large series productions concrete inspection plans can be done by means of a quality assurance system, we have to create up 500 individual inspection plans at times in our production system there,” explains the supervisor for quality management at Duscholux. “Of course we cannot install a terminal including the necessary software at every single inspection site.”
Because the supplier of acrylic bathtubs values quality as well as innovation, and despite all of these impediments, the company did not want to have to do without a software system for quality assurance. In order to avoid high costs and delaying the manual assembly of individual components, Mr. Stelker decided to use the software at his own workstation, positioned at a centralized location. In addition to precise product receiving inspections, here the inspection plans, manually created by the workers, are assembled into a comprehensive inspection plan covering the entire production line. The data that is collected here makes it possible to create not only an initial sample inspection, but also a monthly statistic with which it is feasible to uncover any lack in quality. Subsequently, this lack can be taken into account in future production runs.
When it comes to quality assurance software, the supervisor for Duscholux’s quality management trusts in the performance of CAQ AG Factory Systems software. Mr. Stelker assembled a custom system which satisfied his demands, consisting of software covering initial sample inspections, inspection planning and evaluations, and a module which produces graphic representations of procedures. Dieter Stelker is completely satisfied when it comes to the performance of the base software CAQ-Compact.Net® or any of the connected modules. He is also impressed with the training sessions which continue to keep him up-to-date concerning the latest state of the software and its inherent possibilities.
Duscholux decided to purchase the service package called TSP which allows the company to utilize CAQ AG’s comprehensive support structure as well as the training sessions and software updates. This ensures a trouble-free production run made possible by CAQ AG software. Duscholux is also aware of the fact that its software package offers many more possibilities than those the company utilizes now. Beginning January 1, 2004 Duscholux decided to employ a SAP® system throughout the production line and plans to configure the CAQ AG Factory Systems software to seamlessly fit into this new system as well. This will surely lighten Mr. Stelker’s workload when it comes to creating up to 500 inspection reports – quality and customer satisfaction in addition to wellness will remain Duscholux’s most important mantra.
Renowned customers especially demanding in the area of quality and environmental management describe their success stories and serve as guarantors and references for software that yields high performance and is reliable and fair.
From mid-size companies to multi-national corporations, CAQ AG develops innovative, integrated software solutions that satisfy the highest demands and meet all requirements of quality management.
Furthermore, CAQ AG software supports all quality-related processes pertaining to any value added chain, production companies, and service providers. We attach special importance to compliance with standards as well as 100% release-capability of all of our software solutions without any restrictions – all this while retaining the maximum degree of customization to satisfy customer-specific demands.
Although CAQ AG software solutions are installed on thousands of systems worldwide, we guarantee that you can update your version automatically, no matter how many updates and upgrades you have installed previously. All upgrades function with minimum servicing time and effort onsite. Updates install automatically without requiring you to consult or involve our service staff. Updates neither change nor impede any customer-specific configurations. This principle ensures the full value of your investments.
In all of our efforts our most important goal is not just to satisfy you, but instead to thrill you! One thing is essential to realizing this goal – and we are very proud of our accomplishments on this front: We have a highly motivated, engaged, and competent team in which and with which working is fun!
It is a matter of course for us here at CAQ AG that our employees in development, support, customer service, sales, and management, in addition to having university degrees as well as practical experience, have completed the training courses for “Quality Manager GFQ-IHK” or “Quality Assistant GFQ-IHK” and stay up-to-date by continuously completing training programs.
