Quality and Continuous Improvement

Optimizing every step of our process

At Praxair Surface Technologies, we’re constantly working to achieve operational excellence. Using a variety of tools and techniques, including Six Sigma, we focus on delivering superior quality control and continuously improving our process so we can help our customers make more possible.

Praxair Surface Technologies is committed to providing the highest quality coatings, materials, and equipment to improve our customers' economic and environmental performance around the globe through operational excellence, continuous improvement, a zero-defect journey, and technology development.

Our Quality Principles:

- Quality nonconformances are preventable

- We are committed to consider the human factors in our daily operations

- All employees are:

• Responsible for their compliance to procedures, policies, and principles of business integrity
• Responsible and accountable for the quality of their work
• Obligated to report and/or stop a job that cannot be performed to defined requirements, without fear of retaliation
• Efforts in quality will yield results in customer satisfaction

Quality and Operational Discipline are conditions of employment.

View Quality Certifications by Location

We don’t believe in settling for the status quo. That’s why we work every day to eliminate wasted time, energy and resources and drive our operations to be better, faster and lower in cost for our customers.

We use the following tools to help us continuously improve:

• 5S Principles (Sort, Shine, Set in Place, Standardize and Sustain)–This structured approach is used to create a clean and orderly workplace that exposes and eliminates waste and error

• Value Stream Mapping–A graphic illustration of the sequence of events from order receipt through final delivery, it helps identify wasted time and creates a streamlined process that allows for the quickest possible turnaround

• Visual Manufacturing–The use of visual controls and displays to help employees recognize proper workflow and assess performance at a glance

• Total Productive Maintenance–A preventive maintenance technique that includes established schedules for tool and equipment maintenance to proactively prevent process failures from occurring

• Employee Involvement–A policy that encourages each team to accept responsibility for continually improving its work area, finding and eliminating waste