Victoria, BC, Canada, March 1, 2012: As a result of rapid growth over the past two years Quester Tangent (QT) has expanded their manufacturing, production, testing, advanced engineering and support facilities at Saanichton, British Columbia.
In June of 2009 Quester moved from its long-time home in the University of Victoria’s Marine Technology Centre to a modern facility in the Keating Industrial area . This provided QT with the capacity to deliver 3,000 assemblies per year to commuter train operators and rail car manufacturers.
“With this expansion we have state-of-the-art facilities, over 20 thousand square feet and plenty of room for growth”, stated KD Singh, Quester Tangent’s Operations Manager for Manufacturing. The six thousand square foot environmentally controlled manufacturing floor supports five production lines, specialty cells, and a leading edge wiring harness assembly line. The new thousand square foot engineering prototyping floor is 100% Electrostatic discharge (ESD) compliant and includes lighting specifically designed to support the manufacturing standards. “We now have a very efficient production floor, an exceptional working environment and in house testing. This enables us increase our production rates, while maintaining our high standards in the delivery of leading edge products to fleet operators and rail vehicle manufacturers,” noted Singh.
QT employs lean manufacturing principles such as ‘5S’, ‘Quick change over’ and ‘Multitasking workforce’ throughout its operations all to provide the shortest lead-time, highest quality, and lowest cost for their clients. Quester Tangent’s operations mantra is to be flexible and responsive while handling complex and difficult products efficiently. Customer-Focused Teams manage a product’s evolution and guide improvements over its entire life-cycle. “We continue to invest in state-of-the-art equipment and ongoing skill-building and training of our employees,” added Singh
As part of Quester’s commitment to excellence is the installation of an isolation chamber to measure electro-magnetic radiation. The Gigahertz Transverse ElectroMagnetic cell or GTEM – measures radiated emissions from the electronics QT develops and manufactures. “It is critical that we design low emission components and the addition of the GTEM means we can test our prototypes on site, this not only reduces development time, but provides significant cost savings for the company,” commented Bill Collins, Quester’s Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. The company provides fleet operators and large rail car manufacturers, including Bombardier, Hyundai-Rotem, and Alstom, with the highest levels of quality and reliability. The company boasts an infield rejection rate of less than 2%.
Located on the Pacific Northwest of North America near Victoria, B.C. Quester Tangent, an ISO 9001-2008 company, designs, develops and manufactures leading edge vehicle monitoring hardware and software for the global rail transit industry.