Recorded at the board, as it’s built.
On paper, the proof lives in cabinets of boards and folders of photos someone attached by hand. In a rush week, ten boards out the door, the paperwork runs weeks behind the dispatch. When a client calls about a board, someone goes digging.
CONQA records the check where the work happens, against the board itself. Some of the evidence physically disappears as the board is built: bus bar work gets enclosed, and once it’s sealed you can’t get to it again. So the section is photographed and signed off before it closes, and the board’s record stays open until the last section is done.
Captured at the board, filed against the unit. Sections photographed before they’re enclosed.
The question comes back six months after the board leaves.
“Was this a faulty product? And it’s like, well, no. Here’s the proof that it was fine.”
a QA manager at a switchboard manufacturer
“This is how it left us” only counts if you can prove it.
When a board is questioned in the field (a failed test, damage blamed on the factory, a fault that could have come from transit or install), the cost defaults to the maker unless the record says otherwise. The work was right when it left you. What decides the dispute is whether you can show it: what was built, what was tested, who signed it off, and what it looked like the day it shipped.
CONQA builds that record as the board moves through the shop, tied to the unit itself. When the phone call comes, months later, you answer from the record, not from memory. One switchboard manufacturer answered a disputed megger test that way, with the test records pulled up on a phone. A cable claimed as factory damage was answered from the dispatch photos. A board questioned after a long road trip was settled by the bus-resistance reading taken before it left.
“when it left us, this is what it looked like”
– Trevor Cooper, QA Manager, Border Switchboards
Every check, test result and sign-off, in the board’s own record.
FAT is your QA on show. The record is what makes it credible.
Factory acceptance testing is the one moment the client stands in your workshop and judges how you work. A board backed by a complete record answers the question before it’s asked: every check signed, every test result recorded, “a photo taken of the meter reading five amps, so you can prove the stuff was working when it left the factory”. A board backed by loose paper and a folder of photos raises it, however good the work is.
One motor control centre had thirty-odd cubicles, each with its own checklist and test record. A visiting consultant went through the pack and compared it with what competitors hand over. In Trevor Cooper’s words: “Everyone’s seen reports that just say tick, tick, tick, tick. Whereas this is a detailed document saying passed, this time, by who, with photo evidence that backs up that information.” The same record that defends the board after dispatch is the one that carries the FAT, the handover pack, and the next tender.
The record behind the test, ready to show the day the client walks the floor.