ISO 9001:2015 for mechanical enterprises

ISO 9001:2015 quality management system is a set of standard that helps enterprises to assess product quality and meet demands of dissatisfied customers. Many economic sectors especially mechanical enterprises are applying this system.

Vietnam - Germany Electric Welding Rod JSC, a mechanical enterprise with 50 years of experience, is in charge of providing products such as low Carbon steel welding rod with medium load, high-strength steel welding rod, special welding rod, welding rod for surface restoration, welding wire and ceramic welding powder.

Their leadership are aware of goals of technology application as well as variety of categories, quality improvement of company products.  They has applied ISO 9001:2008 and 5S technology to quality management and quality improvement system. However, they stated that the application did not live up to their expectations because they faced personnel issues affecting system maintenance and improvement.

As a result, the conversion into a new ISO 9001:2015 system is considered to be an integral part to increase in capacity of specialized departments, production plants with a view to meeting growing demands of customers as well as orienting development of leadership in the foreseeable future.

Vietnam - Germany Electronic Welding Rod JSC is one of 36 enterprises who participated in the program "Support the conversion from quality management system according to ISO 9001: 2008 to the new version of ISO 9001: 2015 for industrial enterprises" - one of projects run by Vietnam National Productivity Institute with the aim of boosting commodity productivity and quality, goods in industry within the framework of National Program "Improve goods productivity and quality, commodities of Vietnamese enterprises to 2020" approved by Prime Minister.

This project was deployed within 3 months with training and support of qualified experts.   Vietnam - Germany Electric Welding Rod JSC deployment is devided some main stages: assess reality, train general awareness update and new contents according to ISO 9001:2015, update quality management system, deploy the application of quality management system, assess internal affairs of quality management system.

Results of internal assessment indicate that quality management system at some departments was not really effective, for instance, machine background's details that need replacing were still not fully updated; the chart of room organization was inappropriate for the reality, or some processes, document or dossiers were not finished.

Thanks to experts' support and the determination of the whole leadership and employees, all aforementioned weaknesses were improved effectively and there are some considerable achievements such as:

• Raise awareness of personnels, employees about requirements of ISO 9001:2015 through pre-audit courses;
• Accomplish the writing system to come into use in reality through process determination (particularly direct process of product manufacture), the order - interaction as well as  process control method.
• Have favourable working environment, working style of employeees should be improved.
• In terms of quality, control nearly 100% products.
• Need to conduct inspection, control from input materials to delivery.
• Be easy to manage and find out document system and dossiers, be convenient for information storage and security.

Conversion and successful application of ISO 9001:2015 quality management system represent the fierce determination of leadership and all employees in a company. In reality, leadership need to continue providing human resources to deploy and supply pre-audit courses of awareness for employees; perform periodically internal assessment as well as maintain activities of ISO Department of company with the aim of gradually improving the system.

Vietnam National Productivity Institute.