Quality from the beginning
Professional Development The customer expects the best quality possible and long-term spare parts availability from the HEUFT company. This can only be achieved if the product is produced as an integrated whole from its development to its delivery. Therefore quality assurance today begins with the design of new products.
Those who forge ideas
The Hardware Development Department, one of the 9 groups of the Development Department, comprises highly motivated and qualified employees with many years of experience. A broad spectrum of specialized knowledge, a willingness to undergo further training as well as an extensive understanding of the worldwide component market count amongst the most important qualities of a HEUFT development engineer.
Testing supposedly pointless things and holding on to the "brilliant idea" often bring with them unexpected success. The engineer can approve his product for the customer when the component groups developed pass the rigorous final tests.
Every HEUFT employee has the right of veto
In principle all new developments are introduced to the Purchasing, Production and Quality Assurance Departments in advance and their technical feasibility checked. What is the point of a highly integrated "super chip" if this is not obtainable within a realistic period of time, its placement on a circuit board is only possible with a very high technical expenditure and failure occurs at the customer´s for reasons which cannot be explained. As is customary in all departments there is a reporting system available which refers to suggestions for improvement. It starts with the purchase of the components and continues to the production, checking, that is fitting of these components into the device. If there are in-house complaints improvements have to be carried out in order to optimise the capabilities of production.
Choice of components
The search for new components is proving to be more and more difficult due to the fact that the development and production of electronic components is aimed intensively at the mass market. This market mainly meets the demands for computer and video articles (video, television, DVD and camera). New devices are always developed and produced in large quantities. A camera will only be available on the market for one year at the most. It will already have a successor six months later. New technology produces chips which are more powerful. These "super chips" have no place in industrial devices in the HEUFT company´s view. Only components which can still be ordered in 10 years are approved for use. In exactly the same way several independent manufactures are selected, for each of the parts used, who can guarantee delivery of the spare parts at all times. This is usually possible in the case of standard parts however there are special parts which only one manufacture has in his range of products. In this case this is almost without exception manufacturers who have proved their reliability to the HEUFT company for more than ten years.
A further important aspect is insensitivity towards operating conditions such as voltage fluctuations or voltage failure at the customer´s, strong variations in temperature, high ambient temperatures, high humidity etc. Testing methods have been developed in order to simulate operation under the most extreme conditions. All the limit values listed in the technical documentation serve as the basis for these tests. In principle these values are greatly exceeded during test operation. If a component group operates without faults under such maximum conditions then it is guaranteed that it will also operate at the customer´s even under difficult conditions.
Why not a standard PC?
After the PC made its entrance in the industrial field an increasing number of companies use this supposedly good value hardware in order to solve their complex tasks. In this connection the Windows® operating system is almost exclusively used. A useful result is quickly achieved at a very favourable price and the customer has a system which functions.
Since its setting up the HEUFT company supports a uniform solution using component groups which have been developed in-house and which have been compatible with each other for many years now. Different features are required which a PC or the Windows®-based systems often cannot fulfil.
Reliability: the function of component groups which are developed in-house by the HEUFT company are extensively tested under the most varied conditions - such tests are to some extent not possible with a PC or do not give evidence of future reliability.
Availability: as described above HEUFT component groups have to be available to the customer for many years - e.g. attempts to obtain a PC processor which is two years old as a new product generally fail.
Performance: HEUFT software has been adapted exactly to the hardware in order to guarantee maximum performance with highest reliability. The latest developments have programmable chips with which even the chip can be optimally configured in accordance with the task. By comparison programs have to run on different components (e.g. graphics cards from different manufacturers) under Windows®. After three years at the latest such a graphics card is regarded to be hopelessly outdated and the search for an equivalent replacement is almost impossible. Often the complete system and software has to be upgraded in order to maintain the function on a new graphics card which comes close to a new acquisition.
Conclusion
The development of a component group only has one aim - to offer the customer a solution for his complicated tasks and to do this with a maximum measure of reliability over a time period which is as long as possible. This reliability has to be continuously worked on and checked. Nothing must be left to chance.
And…
HEUFT´s success is proof of this because component groups developed in accordance with HEUFT standards carry out their duties reliably from day one and can still be supplied after many years.