Swift Glass Achieves ISO 9001:2008 Certification

Swift Glass in Elmira Heights recently announced that the company has undergone a 14-month quality improvement program that resulted in achieving ISO:9001-2008 certification. This means that a third-party auditing firm has certified Swift Glass as conforming to internationally accepted quality management standards.

Swift Glass is a family-owned business that employs 90 people to make high quality fabricated glass parts, primarily for the lighting, chemical processing, and diagnostic imaging industries. For example, their parts are used in the medical field in PET and CAT imaging devices, and in high-resolution mammography.

In August 2010 Swift Glass CEO, Dan Burke, asked AM&T for assistance in determining what would be required to achieve ISO certification. AM&T staff briefed the company’s management team, reviewed the company’s quality manual, and conducted a gap analysis that compared the existing practices at Swift Glass with what would be required to gain ISO certification.

Working closely with Gary Palmowski, Plant Manager, and the management team, AM&T led the creation of a new quality manual, an expanded collection of work instructions, and a set of procedures designed to insure continuous quality monitoring and improvement. This process eventually involved all employees, both through briefings and through their direct involvement in creating the new processes and documentation.

Once the new system was implemented in daily production, AM&T helped the company develop an audit process to insure that everyone was actually following the updated quality procedures. After the company operated for several months under the new system, an independent "registrar" organization visited the company to perform an extensive compliance assessment. Based on this third-party assessment, Swift Glass was deemed compliant with the ISO:9001-2008 requirements and certified to the standard.

Michael Meador from AM&T recently had a conversation with Burke and Palmowski about their experience with the ISO certification process:

MM: "Why did you think it was important for Swift Glass to become ISO certified?"

GP: "Our existing quality management system was actually pretty good but it needed improvement and better consistency.

DB: "Our customers required that we at least comply with ISO standards and the FDA has been pushing for medical equipment suppliers to be ISO certified, so we decided that the best choice for the business was to commit to the entire process. Achieving ISO certification has caused our customers to have a lot more confidence and assurance that we can consistently satisfy their needs. Many of our customers do their own audits of our quality control processes, and those outcomes are much better now – almost a difference of night vs. day."

MM: "That’s certainly a strong customer satisfaction story, but what about the cost to the company?"

GP: "We no longer accept the old model that we’re working with a fragile material and have to tolerate lots of scrap due to chips and scratches. Improving the quality control system has enabled us to measure the wasted labor and materials that go into scrap, and to create a feedback loop so that people on the shop floor have the information and motivation to reduce it. Those savings go straight to the bottom line."

MM: "Following new procedures or doing anything differently is like any change – people often resist it. What was your experience with the larger employee group?"

GP: "We have to give a "hats off" to Lloyd Johnson and AM&T, especially in how Lloyd worked with everyone here. All through the 14-months, Lloyd was patient and practical, and presented everything in a positive light to both management and employees. The employees were all involved in learning about the program and helping set the objectives, and that helped them realize that the quality system would help them and the company grow."

DB: "Our customers require defect-free products. We have always followed the policy that the customer is king, so they knew that we would do whatever was necessary to make them happy. All our people come to work wanting to do a good job, and one result of working with AM&T is that employees now understand better what is necessary and expected to achieve high quality standards."

AM&T has assisted companies of all sizes to gain internationally recognized certification of their quality system, to the ISO:9001 standard as well as others such as AS9100. To explore whether or not this type of certification would help your business to retain customers, find new ones, and control costs, contact Jim Cunningham, 607-725-1225.