Quality Assurance
Product Development
The need for lower NOx emissions and more efficient use of energy grows more urgent as each year passes. For this reason, increased R & D in combustion and gas control technologies has become essential to keep pace with their highly complex constituent technologies. The Technology Development Centre is taking on the challenge of developing breakthrough technologies, while continuing the development and design of mass production and maintenance technologies for gas burners and gas controllers – the heart of gas appliances. The centre focuses its R & D on technologies aimed at improving every appliance’s safety, convenience and environmental performance.
Technology Development
Electronic control technologies, as well as their constituent technologies, form the nerve centre of our appliances. Rinnai’s Electronics Development Division develops technologies that make a host of user-friendly feature of Rinnai products instantly accessible. Recognition of such efforts came in 2000, when Rinnai’s condensing type gas hot water appliances received the Ministry of International Trade and Industry’s Energy Conservation Award.
Design improvements increased the heat efficiency of hot-water appliances to world record levels, from 80% to 95%, while decreasing gas consumption by about 16%. This led to a huge reduction in both running costs and NOx emissions – a mere 30 parts per million with the ceramic burner system.
Quality Control
Activities from component production to final assembly are fully integrated at each facility with each line capable of handling small-lot, multi product fabrication. Robots, developed in-house, and advanced inspection equipment guarantee strict standards of safety and quality. Rinnai’s product line is broader and more sophisticated than ever before. Rinnai’s proprietary multiproduct, mixed-flow production system was developed to improve quality and shorten lead-time to delivery. All relevant operations, from order processing to manufacturing and delivery, are supported by strategic information equipment. Rinnai is renowned for the high levels of efficiency throughout its production network. Production of vital control components those which guarantee the safety and convenience of products are assigned only to subsidiaries. RB Controls Co., Ltd., makes microprocessors; Japan Ceramics Co., Ltd., produces ceramic burners; and Rinnai Precision Co., Ltd., manufactures gas valves and thermocouples. In August 2001, several Rinnai group companies four domestic plants, three domestic subsidiaries and seven overseas manufacturing offices acquired ISO 9001 classification for maintaining product quality in R & D, manufacturing and marketing.