Firstronic’s Juarez, Mexico Facility Achieves IATF 16949:2016 and ISO-9001:2015 Certification
GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Firstronic’s, (www.firstronic.com), facility in Juarez, Mexico has been certified to the automotive quality standard IATF 16949:2016 and the latest revision of the ISO 9001 quality standard, ISO 9001:2015. The Company will be upgrading its other facilities later this year as part of the normal quality certification audit process. The migration to the latest revision of the medical standard, ISO 13485:2016 will also be completed at all facilities later this year.
“I am extremely proud of our team because all three key quality standards, ISO 9001, automotive and medical are simultaneously undergoing major revisions and the changes in these revisions are significant enough to require an extensive review of our procedures in order to efficiently and thoroughly implement them. Long-term, the changes in risk assessment and stakeholder consideration will be good for our industry but short-term this combination creates significant workload for our quality organization. I’m pleased they are meeting this challenge,” said John Sammut, Firstronic’s President and CEO.
The automotive standard represented the biggest change and its governing body is no longer the International Standards Organization (ISO). The International Automotive Task Force (IATF) is now the governing body for IATF 16949:2016. “Your ERP system can make or break you in this process. Our Plex Online ERP system allows searching for process and product risk. We looked at the top ten product risks for each customer as part of our transition effort. The new requirements really are very logical in terms of the planning and control processes they drive. Our internal auditor has done a great job with the implementation process and is more actively integrated into our product launch process as a result of the analysis we did during this effort. We have all the right tools in place and I think the enhancements we’ve made will be very visible over the coming year,” said Tony Bellitto, Firstronic’s Director of Quality.
