SEKISUI S-Lec B.V. Geleen achieves ISO9001 certification with Symbol

Symbol, a long-standing relationship

Ruud Verheijen: “We have two plants, one in Roermond (film production) and one in Geleen (resin production). I myself work as Manager Technology at the Geleen site. Previously, our ISO9001 certification was arranged centrally from Roermond, under the guidance of Symbol. Nowadays we in Geleen are responsible for arranging and achieving this certification ourselves, and this came to my plate. However, I neither had the capacity nor the knowledge for this. Hence I connected Symbol – with whom we have thus had a good relationship for many years.”

Internal awareness around ISO

To conduct the internal audit – a so-called GAP analysis – a Symbol partner, Harry Muijzers, is involved. He also gave all managers a short ISO9001 training course to create commitment on the subject. From Symbol itself, young professional Youp Lotgerink picked up the project. “The GAP analysis was a baseline measurement: what still needs to be done in each department to achieve ISO certification? In order to be sharp on this, I put all the findings into Excel so we could keep track of the action points and their status from one file,” Youp says. “I also made my temporary colleagues aware of their role in the process. After all, ISO is something of the whole organization, not something of one department or even one person. Everyone has a responsibility. In addition, the level of knowledge in an organization increases only when people get to work themselves, not when the work is done for them. That is why I have mainly taken on the role of moderator and much less that of executor.”

Landing the message

“Youp has handled this incredibly well,” Ruud adds. “Not only did he qualify and record all the GAPs, he also took on communication with the various departments. This revolved, as Youp points out, mainly around awareness: why is it important that we pick up this action point and how best to do it? In this way, step by step, all GAPs were tackled. Youp had a good sense of who needed what. With one manager he let things go a bit more, with another he was right on top of things. He may be a young professional, but he is very mature in his communication. Because of his good way of communicating, his message landed and people became enthusiastic.”

From training to user-friendly dashboard

“Youp also had a good sense of what our organization needed in terms of content,” Ruud continues. “For example, we work with the document management system ManualMaster. Youp saw a big gap between what was already in the system and what should actually be in it according to the ISO standard. He also discovered the reason: people had too little system knowledge and thus could not work well enough with the package. Youp therefore suggested training all the people responsible for documents for a department, and he asked colleagues from our Roermond office to provide the training. Now ManualMaster is filled correctly. Youp also created a dashboard that brings together all ISO9001 parameters. Planning, status, underlying KPIs: everything is in there. Because we can easily maintain the dashboard ourselves, we won’t face the same challenge next year as we did this year. Thanks to Youp, ISO is something we work on continuously, not just right before an audit.”

Capacity, knowledge and awareness

On April 7, 2022, SEKISUI S-LEC in Geleen successfully passed the TÜV Audit. Youp: “We had zero non-conformances and only one opportunity for improvement – a great success! I am proud to have been able to make my contribution to this.” “And we couldn’t have done it without Youp either,” adds Ruud. “Before starting our journey with Symbol, we lacked capacity, knowledge and awareness. Thanks to the purposefulness of Symbol and Youp, we were able to improve those three things in a short period of time. And obtaining our certificate is of course the icing on the cake.”