When Robert Zell founded Brasscraft Manufacturing Company in 1946, he promised quality and innovation in the plumbing industry to the world. Today we continue to develop innovative products and build quality into every product we make. I’d like to focus on our quality mission and share how Brasscraft Mfg. Co. ensures excellence in all our products.

As a quality engineer, I assist my colleagues regularly to make products simpler, easier, and more innovative. In one instance, we were designing our Commercial Food Service products. We were discussing the cleaning of the kitchen, and someone brought up the point that different cleaners may have different chemicals. Are we certain that the product we are designing will be able to withstand these chemicals? In order to learn more about these cleaning products, we took a field trip to a few local commercial kitchens, reviewed the cleaners used, and tested our product to ensure it would resist these chemicals.

So we have finished designing the product…what happens next? We need to ensure that we design a manufacturing process that builds quality into every step. These come in the way of various tests, training tools, and specialty gauges, just to name a few.

Whether it’s a test where we need to examine every single part or just a sample, we make sure quality checks are built into the process so you get an incredible product.

Now, it’s time to perform our Pilot Production and Validation for the entire manufacturing process and perform testing. In this process we run hundreds of samples of the product and perform more testing. Most of our products are certified (to CSA or IAPMO), meaning they are tested by an outside organization to meeting plumbing standards. However, we don’t rely on certification testing alone. Here at our Brasscraft headquarters in Novi MI, we have a fully functional lab where we test parts to not only certification standards but also some of our own requirements. These tests may include dimensional studies and material analyses. Every new product that comes through the doors of our lab and is tested to ensure it meets not only the required standard but Brasscraft’s quality standards.

After all this testing is performed, we have designed an excellent manufacturing line, we perform what is known as Safe Launch. Before we begin full-scale production, we work with everyone involved in the manufacturing of our product providing training and the requirements for the manufacturing of the product. Our Safe Launch essentially performs a second round of validation to our manufacturing process.

Quality is one of the fundamental pillars of Brasscraft Manufacturing Company, and our full efforts go into making sure you, the plumber, receive the best product we can offer.

Questions? Email me at communications@brasscrafthq.com