QMS IMPLEMENTATION FOR MANUFACTURING START UP
COMPANY
American Sensing Inc. is a small start-up sensor manufacturer with strong technical skills and significant investment in infrastructure. The company designs and manufactures sensing technologies for industrial, aerospace, military and other demanding applications.
SITUATION
The owners have extensive experience working in the aerospace industry and recognized they needed to achieve AS 9100 certification in order to increase sales in this market. As a start-up, however, they faced a challenge that they had little to no document structure or established processes to build upon.
SOLUTION
The owners contacted Insyte Consulting to help them achieve certification in a short time frame with minimal problems by utilizing Insyte’s experienced guidance. The first priority was to develop basic processes and procedures to enable the company to perform the necessary functions without adding restrictions on their limited resources. All procedures were developed and reviewed by the project team. Every effort was made to minimize the length and complexity of the processes.
Due to the short time of the company’s existence, several new methods and metrics needed to be developed. Some of the challenges faced were:
• Developing customer satisfaction measures for customers with little to no history
• Identifying all relevant interested parties
• Collecting sufficient data for measures
• Performing internal audits
These were addressed through ownership experience, customer feedback and Insyte experience. As the implementation progressed the company members took on greater responsibility with the system and ownership of the documents.
The quality system was initiated and records of the functions were generated. A part-time employee was chosen as the internal auditor. This individual was trained and audits were initiated. A mock audit was performed by Insyte personnel to ensure the system met all requirements of AS 9100D.
The AS9100D audit was subsequently completed and certification was achieved with zero non-conformances found.
RESULTS
- Increased sales quotations by 50% due to certification.
- Increased monthly sales by 50%.
- Simplified process for achieving vendor certification for aerospace-related companies.
- The Quality Management System is scalable as the organization grows through increased sales and work volume.
- The first aerospace order was received within days after certification was received.
- Simplified process for achieving vendor certification from Aerospace related companies.
“The whole process for developing the system and getting certified was much smoother than I expected.”
– Gary Sharogradsky, President
