Whitepapers On Whiteboard
Click on the image to open in a New Tab.
Video Transcript
Hi, my name is Corey Denner. I'm a quality engineer at ESP International in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I want to spend a few minutes sharing some details about the quality management systems at ESP.
ISO 9001:2015 & AS9120 B
We hold two different certificates. The first one is an ISO 9001: 2015 certificate, which is a 5-location umbrella certification. It covers our locations at Cedar Rapids, Iowa headquarters are Cedar, Rapids, Iowa, value-add facility, our location in Arlington, Texas, Chennai, India as well as Shenzhen, China. We also hold an AS9120 B certificate in Arlington, Texas location to meet the needs of our customers in the Aerospace sector.
Plan, Do, Check, Act
Our quality management systems are based on the Plan, Do, Check, Act that the standards embrace. At the center of our cycle is the needs and expectations of the interested parties to the functioning of our quality management system.
Plan
Our cycle starts up in the Planning phase. We employ a strategic planning process to set the direction of our company. We leverage our engineering department to provide innovative solutions to meet customer pain points. As well as leveraging our internal opportunity management system to drive us through the product realization process from a customer RFQ to the order fulfillment process.
Out of the planning comes the doing.
Do
What do we do here at ESP?
We supply engineered sealing solutions. We do that through distribution, VMI (vendor-managed inventory), Kitting, and Assembly.
After the Do, flows us into the check process.
Check
We follow the standard prescribed processes of management review and internal audits, but we also leverage a one-page plan review. So up here in strategic planning, the company goals and objectives are set. Well, those are all flowed down through the levels of the organization to every employee-owner at ESP. From that everybody has a goal that ties back to the Plan. We track the goals here to see how we are tracking to the overall strategic direction of the company.
Out of that Check comes the Act.
Act
We use continuous improvement such as 2 second lean, 5S, or process improvements to drive continuous Improvement into the functioning of our QMS, as well as taking corrective action to address any of the shortcomings that are identified through the check process. Which takes us back up to the Planning stage and starts the cycle all over.