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Quality is a simple word, but it is the principle the whole business is built on. Every customer who receives a St Cross Electronics cable assembly or wiring harness deserves complete confidence that it will work, first time and every time. That confidence is not an accident. It comes from a quality system refined over four decades of manufacturing for aerospace, defence, motorsport, medical and telecommunications customers, and independently audited twice a year.
We know what is at stake when you power up your application. A single faulty connection can mean a failed product launch, a costly field return, or a production line standing still. So the checks are built into every stage of manufacture rather than bolted on at the end. A lower-cost assembly without that rigour behind it looks like a saving on paper, but the hidden cost of failure, in rework, in delay and in customer trust, is almost always greater.
We do not test to a sampling plan. Every cable assembly we manufacture is tested using Cirris test equipment before it leaves the building. Each connection point on the tester simulates a specific electrical function within the harness, and the test confirms that:
Our Cirris CH2 handles up to 1,000 circuits in a single routine and delivers 1500V DC down each conductor for a millisecond as a high potential, or hi-pot, check. That one machine represents roughly £100,000 of capital investment. Across the test department as a whole, from the CH2 and signature testers down to handheld units, we have invested over £250,000, and every instrument is calibrated and verified at each test set-up.
Building a harness with a thousand circuits is one problem. Proving all thousand of them before it ships is a different one, and it is why the machine is there.
A continuity test tells you a connection exists today. It says nothing about whether the termination will survive vibration, thermal cycling and five years in a vehicle. So we test the joints as well as the circuits.
Crimping. Every crimped batch gets a tensile pull test on the first and last unit, recorded against the job. The test checks tensile strength, crimp height and whether the joint is genuinely gas-tight. Our Komax Gamma machines go further, with built-in crimp force analysers that check every single crimp as it is terminated. We keep over 100 hand crimping tools for the work that cannot be automated, all calibrated in house several times a year; any tool that fails calibration is quarantined immediately and put through our non-conformance report (NCR) process.
Soldering. Our operators are fully trained to IPC A-610 and IPC J-STD-001, with achievement levels recorded on individual training matrices. Solder areas are ESD-protected with monitored fume extraction, and irons are calibrated and recorded.
Looms and harnesses. Our loom department is trained off site at TYCO in Swindon to Raychem System 25, the contra-helical construction standard used for military, aerospace and motorsport harnessing. Loom boards are serialised and controlled.
Our own internal works process procedures are older than the IPC/WHMA-A-620 standard for cable and harness workmanship, and they follow it closely.
Every assembly passes through our dedicated QC department before it leaves the facility. This is not a spot check. It covers:
Those records are held electronically for a minimum of ten years. If you come back to us in 2035 about a batch we shipped this month, we can tell you what the crimp pull tests read, what the electrical test returned, and that every operation in the build was carried out and signed off.
By the time a harness reaches you, it has already been verified against the same standard you will be holding it to.
For new projects we offer First Off Build Approval as standard. You review and sign off an initial sample build before full production starts, which catches design and specification issues early rather than after a full batch has been made.
We produce our own in-house First Article Inspection Report (FAIR), or we will work to your format if you have one. Certificates of conformity and test certificates are available on request. Ask at the time of order so we can build the requirement into the job.
| Batch size | From 1 prototype to 100,000+ |
|---|---|
| Wire size | 32AWG micro-gauge to 150 mm² heavy-duty power |
| Complexity | Single point-to-point cables to harnesses of over 1,000 circuits |
| Electrical test | 100% of units, Cirris, up to 1,000 circuits per routine |
| Hi-pot | Low and high potential testing up to 1500V |
| Crimp verification | Pull test first and last of every batch, plus in-process crimp force analysis |
| Record retention | Minimum ten years, held electronically |
| Manufacturing | One site, Southampton, over 10,000 sq ft. No offshore facility |
That range matters more than it looks. Handling 32AWG signal wire and 150 mm² power cable in the same building means a single supplier can carry a project that has both, with one quality system, one set of records and one point of contact. Our tooling and equipment inventory sets out the machinery behind it.
The phrase "the same building" is doing real work in that sentence. Every assembly we supply is manufactured, inspected and tested at Southampton, from globally sourced components. There is no offshore facility and no offshore partner, so the quality system described on this page is the whole quality system rather than the part of it you can see. Our UK manufacturing page covers what that changes.
When you buy a harness from St Cross Electronics, we guarantee it will work. That guarantee is backed by formal, independently audited certification:
All three are UKAS accredited, certified by ISOQAR, and audited twice a year at our Southampton site. We run them as a single integrated management system rather than three separate ones, so quality, environmental and safety decisions are taken together rather than in isolation.
We have held ISO 9001 continuously since 1990, when it was known as BS5750 Part 2. Environmental and health and safety certification followed in 2008 with ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001, which ISO 45001:2018 has since replaced.
Worth being precise about what that gives you. An ISO 9001 certificate does not make your product compliant with anything. What it gives you is documented, audited, traceable process control from goods-in to dispatch, which supports your own compliance obligations rather than replacing them.
Beyond the ISO standards we are registered on JOSCAR, the aerospace, defence, security and space sector's shared supplier pre-qualification register, and certified under Cyber Essentials. Every certificate and policy is published on our Approvals & Compliance page, downloadable without a form or a request.
A quality system only holds if somebody is watching it. Ours is driven by monthly key performance indicators (KPIs) agreed by every department, covering efficiency, quality, workmanship and safety, which feed top-level measures for on-time delivery, quality and maintaining our accreditations. Training runs off a matrix with individual improvement plans and monthly reviews. Production scheduling has been refined over four decades and has run on our Priority enterprise resource planning (ERP) system since 2014.
The people matter too. This is an owner-managed business following a management buyout in 2003, and both directors came up through the shop floor; our Production Director joined in 1984 on an apprenticeship. Many of our operators have been here for decades. Institutional knowledge of that depth is not something you can certify, but it is the reason the system works.
Have a question about our quality processes, test capability or certifications? We are happy to talk you through exactly how we make sure every harness leaving the building meets the standard you expect. Better still, come and see it: ask about a visit to the Southampton facility.
Call +44 (0)23 8022 7636, email [email protected], or send us your drawings for review.
Need more info? Call Us +44 (0)23 8022 7636
