No single quality playbook

ISO 9001 registration might make sense for some metal fabricating shops, but that's not the case for all.

The best part of this job is seeing how different manufacturers satisfy their customers’ needs. The second best part is never having to sit through the same story twice.

The commonality in all of these stories is the on-time delivery of quality metal parts. That’s the bottom line to their success. The stories, however, have different protagonists and challenges. The fabricators all serve different customers in different economic segments with different needs. It’s an ever-changing scene against the backdrop of the North American manufacturing community. That definitely keeps life interesting for those that fabricate metal parts for a living—and those that get to cover the industry.

People outside of this community tend not to realize that. They think all manufacturing is alike and what might work for a 250-person metal forming company that primarily serves the automotive industry likely will work for the 25-person job shop with 70 customers in 15 industry segments. The one-size-fits-all strategy is not going to work for a company that requires flexibility in its processes.

This came to mind as I was interviewing Rich Edwards, president, and Bill Kirkelie, sales manager, Precision Waterjet, Crystal Lake, Ill., for “Keeping precision in part fabrication,” which appeared in the September issue of The FABRICATOR. When most of the precision fabrication world has pursued ISO 9001 registration, Precision Waterjet hasn’t. The company doesn’t see a need for it.

“It’s not that we don’t operate in the same manner if we were under the ISO 9001 rules. We have systems in place [for quality]. We can meet everything that customers need, and we can provide full documentation showing our quality efforts,” Edwards said. “But the reason that we don’t do it is because for ISO, you have to follow those specific procedures for every job, and that slows us down.”

Those quality procedures are important when Precision Waterjet is fabricating parts to +/- 0.002 inch for demanding customers. In fact, some fab shops that work predominantly with the aerospace industry likely have ISO 9001 registration to prove to their demanding customers that they have the systems in place to deliver quality parts, every order, every day.

But then there are days when Precision Waterjet is waterjet cutting flooring inlays for a professional football team’s locker room. The football team officials are more concerned about changes to the collective bargaining agreement with the players’ union; they aren’t concerned with any sort of documents from the manufacturer cutting sections of their new floor. Why should Precision Waterjet be concerned with documentation for that job?

Kirkelie said that Precision Waterjet’s corporate culture nurtures an environment that takes pride in meeting customers’ need and in delivering quality work, not adhering to some corporate quality management program.

“You can just watch one of our operators and see how they do a first- or last-piece inspection. The quality process is embedded in how they’re making the part. We just don’t have to worry about the added expense and time delay of documenting everything,” Kirkelie said.

Right now, the head of quality assurance for some company or an ISO 9001 consultant is reading this and aggressively shaking his or her head. These are no longer the days where ISO certification means documenting everything and then doing everything the way it’s been documented, ISO experts would argue. ISO 9001 certification has evolved so that an organization needs to identify only those important items that need to be addressed in a process, not the exact way a process is executed.

That might be true, but it doesn’t really matter for those manufacturers that are doing just fine without ISO 9001 certification. Quality is in the eye of the customer for most in the metal fabricating world.

Kirkelie said that phone calls do come from purchasing personnel who lead with the question “Is your shop ISO 9001 certified?” That helps them narrow down supplier lists. But Kirkelie added that some of those same folks place follow-up calls as well because eventually they can’t find shops to do the precision work they need.

“Customers who work with us on the engineering side and understand what we can do tend to stay with us,” Edwards said.

Edwards said that when potential customers are able to visit Precision Waterjet, they understand that the shop can deliver on what it is promising. Seeing is believing, and these customers witness the operators’ skills and the steps taken to deliver high-precision parts.

While the shop may lack a certificate hanging from the wall indicating its adherence to documented quality processes, Edwards said it has plenty of repeat business that reminds him of the quality standards that have to be attained and the areas where improvement might be needed. Edwards knows what needs to get done to keep Precision Waterjet customers satisfied. There’s no playbook or set of guidelines that is a suitable replacement for that combination of experience and fabricating knowledge.

It’s safe to assume that same thing can be said for most fabricating operations.