While Graphicast has always maintained a reputation for quality products, we did not have a lot of market pressure to become an ISO-9001 registered supplier. Our customers were happy with our quality system and we regularly passed quality audits. That is, until the recession hit us square in the face. We found very quickly that in response to the recession, many companies were actively strengthening their supply chains. Besides ensuring that their suppliers were financially viable, they were also trying to eliminate internal costs associated with working with those suppliers. One way to reduce costs was to reduce vendor audits and any vendor uncertainty. This put the pressure on us to be able to succeed in this environment. So began our ISO 9001-2008 registration and certification journey.
With a good production quality system in place. our efforts were aimed at the documentation and control aspects of the ISO quality system. We’ve made a lot of progress in the past nine months and just completed our certification stage 1 audit. Based on the results of that audit, we have our registration audit scheduled for the end of July. If all goes well, we will have completed the first part of the ISO journey, getting our ISO 9001-2008 certification. Then the challenge of maintaining and improving the system begins. We’re looking forward to it!