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Posts Tagged ‘safety’

Testing Times – No, Not Another ‘Let’s Beat the Recession’ Entry

Did I get you all there? I could hear the collective groan from my offices here in the Isle of Wight!

No, thanks to our technical expertise, listening to our customers and providing fast delivery, at the right prices, here at LCM Systems we have not been affected by the recession and our business continues to grow. However, it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have a current hobby horse about how in the fight for business and reducing overheads and prices, it is the customers who are getting short-changed.

My latest gripe is with inadequate testing of load cells before they are dispatched. From talking to customers and other load cell manufacturers and distributors, it appears that, in a bid to save money, the quality of many products is being compromised due to them either not being tested at all, batch tested (so only a certain number are tested, not the whole batch) or the sensors are not tested to their maximum capacity. An example I heard recently was that a company supplied a 500t load cell that failed, only for the customer to find out that the supplier had only tested the product to 200-300t, as that was all they were able to do in-house and were not prepared to pay for external testing! Bearing in mind that many of these large capacity load cells are used in critical applications and failure could be catastrophic!

So, make sure your load cells are 100% tested, calibrated and traceable. You can rest assured that these happens with all load cells you but from LCM and they are all traceable to UKAS – The United Kingdom Accreditation Service.

Reject the Throw Away Culture – Safety is All Important

We are all very aware of today’s throw-away culture. In her recent book the Story of Stuff, published in May 2010 in the UK, Annie Leonard discusses how only 1% of products that we buy are in use 6 months later. You can see her talk about it in this excellent short animated discussion at The Story of Stuff.

But it’s not just the consumer culture that is to blame for this huge wastage. Many of us want to follow the latest fashions, be they in the consumer world or business to business sector. Because fashions come and go, products are often made without much regard to quality so they can be sold cheaply. And here lies another problem – cost. If something is only going to be used for a short space of time then what’s the point in spending a lot of money on it?

But, and here is my point, what if the product is meant to last and its failure would have serious safety implications? The “pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap” culture cannot be applied here, can it? Unfortunately it often is.

I know negotiation on price is part of business but compromise shouldn’t be. Take for example the LCM Systems’ shackle load cells for lifting and weighing applications in harsh, rugged industrial environments. Known throughout the world as manufactured to the highest possible specifications in high tensile carbon steel and using Crosby or Greenpin shackles, there is no doubt that they can do the job, day in, day out without any safety or quality issues. So why are people buying cheaper? LCM Systems is not the only company (unfortunately ;-) ), who sell such high quality products, so it’s simply a matter of choice.

Courtesy of freedigital images.net

It really is a case of Caveat emptor – Buyer Beware. The cheap shackle load cells you are buying may claim to be equal, but is the safety of your personnel and the reputation of your company worth saving a few hundred dollars or pounds?

When quality, reliability and accuracy are essential, please check out the credentials of the company you are buying from – it could save someone’s life

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