Better quality across the board

Plasterboard is an unsung hero of the modern construction industry and can reduce labour input as well as achieve valuable reductions in time on site.

It is no surprise, therefore, that plasterboard manufacturing is big business. British Gypsum is the UK’s largest plaster, plasterboard and related products manufacturer. The Company has been making plasterboard for over a century and today produces over 150million square metres every year in five plants across the UK. Needless to say consistent quality is of critical importance to British Gypsum.

Until recently, the five different British Gypsum board-producing plants, used paper-based recording systems of different types, while one had built its own in-house database system.

According to Amanda Nurcombe, Company Quality Systems Manager at British Gypsum, a desire by the Company to introduce a standard process across all its plants led to a search for a better solution.

After evaluating various products, British Gypsum selected Northwest Analytical’s (NWA) Quality Monitor package, supplied by Adept Scientific. NWA Quality Monitor is a powerful, dedicated solution for shop floor data collection and statistical process control. The package allows standardised workflow processes to be built to match the needs of a specific production line, stores data from multiple workstations in a central database and provides live charting and analysis of quality data.

“Even during the pilot phase, I’ve been able to analyse data at my desk,” explains Amanda. “When we complete the roll-out to all the plants we will also be able to compare their performance on different products and share best practices between plants.”

For Amanda having a single, standard system in place will help greatly with control and flexibility. “With Quality Monitor I know that, as our requirements change in the future, the system is flexible enough for us to incorporate those changes directly into the database.”