Adshead Ratcliffe are a long established Derbyshire based manufacturer of Construction and Industrial Sealants. Trading under the ARBO brand, the business designs and manufactures a wide range of products for the building, glazing and construction industries, with specialist materials available for marine, automotive and industrial sectors. The company became a subsidiary of the multi-national Carlisle Group in 2017, but continues to maintain its own Integrated Management System. I was initially contacted by Steve Brown - Technical Director, as the business needed to ensure a smooth transition from ISO 9001:2008 to the 2015 release of the Quality Management System standard.
Adshead Ratcliffe has been successfully maintaining an Integrated Management System certified to both ISO 9001 (Quality) and ISO 14001 (Environmental) standards for a number of years, but the 2015 updates held some significant changes which the company believed they needed specialist assistance with.
We quickly identified where systems and procedures needed updating to meet the requirements of the new 9001 standard and also the location of the common touch points of the Quality and Environmental systems, as both ISO 9001 and 14001 now followed the “Annex SL” common format.
The main body of work revolved around the review of the organisations Interested Parties (Stakeholders) relevant requirements and Context of the Organisation, both new clauses in the 2015 revisions. Implementation of the necessary changes were managed and procedures updated where required, to ensure the IMS met both the ISO standards requirements, but also most importantly, continued to meet the needs of the business and add value.
Following the successful re-certification, I was pleased to be asked back into the business by Steve to not only to continue to assist and support in the ongoing development of the Integrated Managements System, but also to undertake a variety of projects from Non Conformance Management / Root Cause Analysis training, to analysis and evaluation of Customer Feedback data as part of the businesses’ continuous improvement strategy.
“Working with Dave has made the transition to the 9001:2015 standard easier and more enjoyable than compliance processes usually are. Dave has a way of getting into the business, understanding the people, processes and surrounding issues and transforming them into ISO language, which is a major skill and one that I lack in any great detail. Working with Dave has been very useful and as a business we have learned a lot from Dave’s experience in several industries, so although the brief was to help us transition to the new 9001, our collaborative work and business relationship will not stop with our accreditation. We want to continue working with Dave and value his input into our activities, and in a selfish way we hope that Relevant Business Solutions (Registered Company of David Barker Consulting) don’t become too successful, as then Dave will struggle to fit time in for us, but his skills, knowledge, enthusiasm, and easy going manner are highly recommended.”