ISO 9001 : 2000 at SouMac Assembly Services Limited

In February 2004 I received an enquiry from SouMac Assembly Services Limited, Portsmouth, for consultancy assistance to achieve ISO 9001 approval.

SouMac Assembly Services commenced trading in January 2004 and provide a subcontract service for conventional and surface mount printed circuit board assemblies. They operate in the high-technology, high-quality, low-quantity market-place and quickly recognised that ISO 9001 approval was a mandatory requirement for consideration as a supplier to professional electronics organisations.

The requirement was to implement a quality management system and have it assessed and registered to ISO 9001 : 2000 by a UKAS accredited certification body. The proposed time-scale was to achieve registration by September 2004.

I submitted a quotation and project time-scale designed to achieve registration by September 2004.

The project commenced in March 2004 and significant milestones are as follows:

March  Printed Circuit Board Assembly flowcharts produced (10 in total)
April  Quotations requested from five UKAS accredited certification bodies
April  Assessment body (URS) selected
April  Quality Manual prepared
April – May Quality Management System flowcharts produced (25 in total)
April – June QMS systems implemented e.g. corrective & preventive action, customer complaints, document changes, supplier rejections
June Documented QMS submitted to URS for desk-top document review
June  URS report received – no nonconformities reported
June – July Internal audit cycle
July  Management Review
July On-site assessment by URS resulted in registration being recommended. No nonconformities (major or minor) were observed.

I project-managed the complete project, taking a total of 21 days of my time.