Ensuring the quality of ionic machines
At Ionic, “Quality without Compromise” has been our core principle ever since the very first Reach and Wash® systems were manufactured nearly 20 years ago. Today, the Ionic brand is known the world over for the high quality of design and manufacture.
Maintaining this very high standard is by no means an easy task. Craig Mawlam explains how Ionic’s reputation for quality is safeguarded by the machine testing procedure,
“It’s very easy to claim ‘high quality’, but much harder to actually deliver it. Quality is not a product or a procedure or a service. It’s a culture, a state of mind and an attitude. From the very start, the Reach & Wash system was manufactured with the highest of quality in mind, and there are good reasons for that. I made the decision a long time ago that Ionic’s products would be built with no-compromise quality as the standard, and that they’d be the best available anywhere.”
It’s often a surprise to customers that every Ionic machine is fully run-up tested before being passed for installation. Craig explains;
“It is not easy or cheap to implement the kind of testing regime we have in place, but it is the only way to consistently deliver high quality. As our customer base now extends across the world, it’s all the more important that customers have the confidence that Ionic products are built to perform reliably year after year.” Craig continues,”Ionic regularly sees customers who have had machines for over ten years, often having been moved from one vehicle to another more than once. “To me, that is the true measure of a high-quality product. Ionic machines are not the cheapest, but I believe that buying a quality product saves money in the long run, as they are made to last.”
Testing times
Every machine that is manufactured at the Ionic factory in Swindon is subjected to a comprehensive and documented machine testing procedure. This is done inside a purpose-built testing facility which has it’s own purewater supply and specialised instrumentation. The testing station has instruments that can accurately measure water flow, TDS, pressure, temperature, power consumption, calibration and resistivity (an advanced way to measure water purity). Each and every function of the machine is tested, a process that often requires more than a day to complete.
Each machine’s test data is logged, and only if the strict test parameters are met is the machine passed, and authorised for installation or dispatch.