How Worcester makes reliable products

Our Technical Quality department ensures our Greenstar condensing boilers meet the standards expected of a Bosch product.

As well as the stipulations made by law and the heating industry, our rigorous quality checks make sure our boilers meet and exceed installer expectations.

The Technical Quality department is split into two sections: Calibration and Product Audit.

Calibration

The team is responsible for ensuring that all measurement and test equipment is fit for its intended purpose and that it remains so throughout its life. This includes all equipment used for quality testing in manufacturing and product audits.

Manufacturing process tests and measurements

During the manufacturing stages of a Greenstar condensing boiler, we conduct a number of tests and measurement activities, including:

• Water circuit
• Gas
• Combustion chamber
• Heat cell
• Internal flue
• Electrical safety tests
• Torque measurements
• Final test (checking/setting an average of 15 separate performance parameters)

Product Audit

As the name suggests this is an audit of a completed product including its packaging, literature and any added accessories. These fall into three types:

‘A’ Test

A visual check of the product including packaging, literature, painted panels, cable routing, part numbers of key components and general tidiness of the product.

‘Q’ Test

The appliance is loaded onto a test rig and extended performance tests are carried out over a period of approximately two hours. The parameters measured include: heat input, thermal efficiency, combustion performance, hot water performance, as well as checking several key safety systems.

After both ‘A’ and ‘Q’ tests the Greenstar boilers are carefully repacked and released to stock.

‘Z’ Test

For this test, samples are selected from production at a rate of 100 parts per million (0.01%). The condensing boiler is pre-tested as in the Q test and then installed on a special rig which carries out accelerated simulated life tests.

It takes, on average, a period of nine months to simulate three years of normal service after which a post test is conducted enabling a product life to be estimated. This test ensures that our boilers’ life expectancies remain at, or greater, than when they were first produced.

After these tests the boilers are recycled as they have had the equivalent of three years’ use.

In the unlikely event that a failure is found in any of the product audits, the Technical Quality team support the relevant areas of the business to put corrective actions into place, ensuring that the failure cannot be repeated. Corrective actions are also monitored until they are complete.