---
title: "Quality Assurance: Finding that Needle in the Haystack"
description: AFC Europe, the new name for TFC, puts quality assurance first when supplying components and managing inventory for manufacturing businesses
image: https://blog.afceur.com/hubfs/AFC%20Europe%20FAST%20Spotlight%20Jul-25.png
---
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# Quality Assurance: Finding that Needle in the Haystack
Brian Vince
### Brian Vince
With 27+ years at TFC, Brian is detail-oriented, analytical, and a natural problem solver with a passion for continuous improvement and learning. His extensive experience includes qualifications in Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, Health and Safety, Auditing, Personal Training, and AI system design. Brian led TFC to achieve AS9120/AS9100 certification in 2005 and redesigned the TFC 8D process in 2023, showcasing his commitment to process improvement.
July 24, 2025
#### AFC Europe, the new name for TFC Europe, supplies millions of components every year to manufacturing businesses in multiple sectors. Sourcing from a global network of manufacturing partners, ensuring quality is our number one priority. Here, Brian Vince, Quality Manager at AFC Europe emphasises the criticality of ensuring there are no stray needles in any of our haystacks!
The services provided by AFC Europe vary from designing and supplying technical product solutions that range from Fasteners to Wave Springs to Seals & O-Rings and Custom Engineered Components or turned parts.
Often these components are supplied via inventory managed solutions, which allows manufacturing companies to focus more on their operations instead of spending time managing global supply chains. Whether managed or simply supplied to order, AFC Europe ensures that the quality and integrity of each and every component is their number one priority. This is the primary focus for the quality team at AFC Europe, headed by Brian Vince.
“Every supply situation begins with having a reliable and appropriately accredited manufacturing partner.”, says Brian, “It is our job to ensure that only the best, most reliable and repeatable manufacturing processes are used and that means working with professional manufacturing companies all around the world.”
The scale of products supplied by AFC is vast, not just in quantity but also in variety, ranging from standard fasteners to custom designed and engineered turned parts. It also extends to AFC Europe’s own manufacturing and fabrication facilities within their Seals & O-Rings Division in the UK and their newly acquired Verucon business in Germany which has highly specialised CNC machining capabilities capable of machining high grade and high specification turned products.
When dealing with a vast global supply chain, pre-qualifying manufacturing partners and trusting repeatable manufacturing processes is paramount, but nothing is left to chance. The assurance of quality with such a high volume of products moving through their business keeps AFC Europe’s quality team on their toes at all times. “It is sometimes like finding a needle in a haystack, but we’re very good at it and have internal processes that enable us to ensure that what we supply is exactly what the customer is expecting.” Does it ever go wrong? “Very rarely, but let’s face it, the world is never always perfect!”, according to Brian, who goes on to explain, “On the rare occasion that we do find a problem, we make sure the root cause analysis is completed and corrective actions put in place to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
Sourcing your component supply through a supply chain partner like AFC Europe, saves an enormous amount of time and also opens opportunities to reduce direct costs by finding new manufacturing supply options as well as indirect savings through internal efficiency gains and reduced working capital.
Contact AFC Europe today to find out how they could help your manufacturing business to source and supply components of all shapes and sizes and trust them to find that elusive needle in the haystack to assure you of quality at all times.
For further information [click here](https://www.afceur.com/quality-standards/)
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##### Contact us (UK)
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Hale House
Ghyll Road Industrial Estate
Heathfield East Sussex
TN21 8AW
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0) 1435 866011
Email: enquiries@afceur.com ](mailto:enquiries@afceur.com)
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Tel: +420 581 602 721
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