On Dec. 9, 2014, Ken-Tool became certified with the current ISO 9001:2008 standards for quality management systems.
ISO is the world’s most widely used quality assurance procedural guidelines, and lays the groundwork for an organization’s development of a uniform set of procedures to establish, monitor and ultimately control product or service quality.
Doug Romstadt, president of Ken-Tool stated, “We began the process of establishing the policies and procedures to obtain the certification in February of this [past] year. A primary reason we embarked on this journey to ISO certification is to make us a better manufacturer, and apply a uniform structure and discipline upon the organization.
“One of the important reasons we wanted to do this was to support future growth for Ken-Tool. Being ISO-certified provides our company with an opportunity to sell our forging talents to an expanded customer base. Our core business is tools, and we have been selling those tools for over 90 years, so we wanted to provide our talents to other industries, including automotive, marine and military, and to participate in those kinds of markets, you must have ISO certification.”
The ISO standards (determined by the International Organization for Standardization) serve as comprehensive guides for establishing, then maintaining and continuously improving, an organization’s quality standards for many industries – manufacturing, distribution and service – to meet the customers’ quality expectations, as well as the legal and regulatory standards. ISO 9000 is built upon eight management principles, from which the standards are drawn.
The ISO 9001 program addresses the requirements in procedures and practices needed to meet the ISO 9000 criteria. Utilizing audits by outside, ISO recognized auditing firms, as well as continuous internal audits, companies and organizations rigorously assure the quality standards are being met, deficiencies noted with causes identified and corrected, and that records are utilized as tools to improve the system.
By meeting the established ISO 9000/9001 standards to the satisfaction of the outside audit firm, companies/organizations are issued compliance certificates. The International Organization for Standardization does not issue these compliance certificates.
Romstadt also points to the fact that the ISO certification is an additional level of product design and manufacturing competence within the company. He cites the use of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) to create tools made exacting standards, as well as Six Sigma trained employees and PPAP (Production Part Approval Process) Level 3 compliance as examples of leading industry standards which Ken-Tool and its Summit Tool and Forging division have utilized to achieve high levels of quality at all levels of the company’s operations.
These standards are used by leading companies worldwide, and with ISO 9001 certification, Ken-Tool further cements its strong quality reputation in the tire service product marketplace, worldwide. “We do not see this altering the product standards this company has provided its customers over the years,” noted Romstadt, “But it does bring us the discipline which will assure we continue to meet those high expectations, and to deliver the same high standards to our customers.”
Ken-Tool products are available through leading tire industry supply distributors worldwide. For more information, visit www.kentool.com.