Quality Control

Like most things at Boxley, quality control begins with our partnership with customers. Whether it's regular aggregate or a custom product that only we can provide, our goal is to meet each customer's high quality standards.

Boxley has lab technicians at each plant to monitor production and ensure the materials are in spec. They also monitor the process to verify that not only our product is consistent, but the way we make it is consistent too.

At Boxley we believe there's always a better way to do something. We take suggestions from our customers and employees seriously. And we perform annual physical property testing of the products from each quarry. These include:

• Specific Gravity (useful for determining asphalt and concrete mixes)
• Unit Weight (useful in determining the amount of product needed)
• LA Abrasion Test (durability)
• Soundness Test (tests how freezing and thawing affects aggregate quality)

These test results are reported in the annual Product Data Sheet, which is available to customers. Listening to our customers and keeping a close watch on our production techniques and products helps Boxley provide the best materials and service possible.

What is QMS?

QMS stands for Quality Measurement System. With it we grade each quarry's quality performance in three very important areas:

1. Sampling frequency - A measure of how often product samples are taken. This ensures that everyone at Boxley is keeping a close eye on the quality of our products.

2. Consistency or Standard Deviation - This measures variation, changes in the size distribution of material, within a single product. Product consistency is crucial to a quality product.

3. Passing Samples - A measure of the percentage of all the samples run at each quarry that meet the customer specification.

A quarry's QMS score is determined by averaging the grade (percent) of these three areas. The QMS goal for each plant is 90.