Christenhusz: ISO9001 Do it for your organization!

Christenhusz is a metal foundry specializing in aluminum, bronze, aluminum bronze and brass castings. The company produces sand castings both hand and machine formed, in various series and materials. With father and son Pelle at the helm, Mrs. Pelle for the office affairs and with 7 employees in production, the lines of communication in the organization are short and the customer’s wishes come first.

“Our product quality was already good; we could actually improve in the process!”

Rick Pelle, 30, after studying “Management, Economics & Law” and several years of work experience, has been co-owner of the family business Christenhusz, founded by his father, for 3 years. Rick knows all the ins and outs of the organization but his main focus in recent years has been on quality policy and its implementation.

Rick: “I was already giving substance to our quality policy and my desire was to become an ISO certified organization. Because a major customer of ours demanded this certification, the whole story gained momentum. We were looking for a consulting firm in the area. Symbol’s website provided sufficient guidance. I would certainly recommend Symbol to fellow entrepreneurs. Not only because of the knowledge, but also because of the practical approach. This was hugely important to us!”

Structure the organization better? Then grab the ISO certification right away!
The Symbol consultant adds, “The project at Christenhusz shows that even small organizations can become ISO9001:2015 certified without a lot of paperwork. Often there is already a need to structure the organization better. If you do that in such a way that you meet the ISO standard, you can kill two birds with one stone!”

Improve quality through ISO9001:2015 certification

Rick: “During the orientation phase, we searched the Internet for what certification actually entails. We also gathered information from fellow foundries. We came to the conclusion that we would need an outside party to successfully navigate and complete this process. A foundry from Oldenzaal pointed us to a particular website. We came to Symbol through this site.

After first making a plan late last year, we really got started early this year. First, we did an analysis of the organization.”

Reduce search costs while increasing delivery reliability and customer satisfaction

“We appeared to have high search costs. This was caused by the fact that no process was insightful. Clients bring models to us. Organizationally, there was no set structure for this. Nor do we have the executive processes mapped out. In particular, we have now monitored and provided insight into these processes.

This has resulted in huge savings in search costs and much higher customer satisfaction. We now know when what is ready. Previously, we had to scroll through a folder to find the order and something of a status. Actually, the customer who complained the loudest was helped first.

Delivery reliability, customer satisfaction and response time to requests are now being measured. We first started measuring for a while to arrive at a 0 measurement. We were then at a delivery reliability of about 89-90%. From this we were able to formulate an objective. Within a year, we wanted to be at 95% delivery reliability. This is now actually being achieved. So we’re going to raise that bar another notch for next year.”

Greater control of process steps

“We still have a few processes outsourced, but we are doing more and more ‘in house.’ For example, we recently acquired equipment to analyze a sample supplied by a customer for the chemical composition of the material, which allows us to make the certificates ourselves. For the certificates, we still only outsource the mechanical analyses. However, this is planned so that it carries as little risk as possible for delivery reliability. But also this part we want to do ourselves in the future so that we are no longer dependent on an external party and thus have even more control over our process and thus delivery times.”

Peace and order in the workplace

“Ultimately, the newly created structure has created a lot of calm in the workplace. Whereas before I had to direct the staff several times a day and answer questions, now I only see them during breaks. They now know how to work. The loose ends are covered by procedures and regulations. For example, they know which order has priority and they no longer have to search for tools and the customer models, for example. These customer models are now structured and stored in the models room.

Overall, the staff’s response was positive. There was slight resistance at first because the quality of the product would not necessarily improve. But the quality of the process does improve. And that has huge benefits for costs, resources and people. We created a registry for rejection. In this we describe the reason for rejection. In the past, we sometimes made the same mistake twice. That is no longer possible because of this.”

Implementing ISO9001:2015: Do it for your own organization!

“It has been a lot of work, though, which I may have underestimated a bit. In retrospect, I should have given up a little more work. Certain activities I could have left to colleagues. Especially the layout of the model loft. Small organizational matters outside of production soon come to us as owners.

I would say to other organizations also considering implementing a quality management system such as ISO9001:2015, “Do it for yourself, not for the standard! It has to be an improvement for the organization. You should not do it because it happens to be so in the standard. We kept it fairly basic. In the future, we could go deeper into certain aspects. For example, establishing production methods for difficult products that are now made based on experience. So we have already started making further improvements, such as the introduction of the NCR (rejection) register.”