SIFCO Applied Surface Concepts (UK) Ltd, a selective metal plating company based in Bromsgrove, have been successful in gaining the new AS9100 Rev C specification.
Over the past 12 months the company has been gearing up its quality systems and are now able to say they can satisfy the stringent requirements of the AS9100 Rev C and have proudly hung the certificate in their reception area. At the time of receipt of the certification, Sifco were one of only 84 companies in the whole of the UK to acheive the feat.
SIFCOs’ MD, Mark Smith, said that in order to achieve the requirements took a great team effort by everyone involved at SIFCO. “We put into place over the past few years quite a few measures to ensure that our quality system was the best it could be. As our main market is Aerospace work, closely followed by Oil & Gas, we had to ensure that we worked to the highest standards as required by these Industries.”
Because the company produce chemicals for the Selective Plating market place and carry out contract selective plating work at their Bromsgrove works and onsite at customer’s premises, one of the key areas was traceability and risk aversion. Smith states “we have to ensure that all our products, right down to the raw materials used within the chemicals, are fully traceable from source to final use and back. We already had a process which enabled us to meet this requirement, but we understood the limitations of own traceability processes and had to therefore improve them.” In order to assist SIFCO improve the system, every document is now scanned in and logged onto the system which aids electronic traceability. Solution batches are logged onto a spreadsheet with each document relevant to that batch hyperlinked where necessary. This assisted the auditors in finding documents quickly and efficiently ensuring that the audit went without a hitch. This also applies to all documentation relevant to every order transaction which goes through the company. One of the comments from the auditors was “they wished all companies were as much a pleasure to work with as were SIFCO.”
SIFCO hope that the implementation of their improved quality system, along with the attainment of the AS9100 Rev C accreditation, will see a further increase in sales over the next financial year with further improvement of profitability. Smith says “any system a company implements should not only improve its’ own internal processes, but also enable the company to increase the profitability of the business. There is no point in putting in a system that will hinder business improvement as this would only stifle growth.”
This past year has been a testament to the company’s philosophy of business improvement and growth. With the financial year end fast approaching, sales are up by 26% over the previous year with Operating profitability running at 18% of sales, thus ensuring a bright future for this growing company.