Fujichem Sonneborn (FCS) are international manufacturers of specialist coating products, from wood coatings for pianos and kitchen surfaces to thermal and PVD coatings for car exteriors.
Providing technical coatings to major automotive OEMs has made quality of paramount importance to the FCS operation.
FCS work to the requirements of:
- ISO 14001:2015
- ISO 9001:2015
- IATF 16949:2016
- 5S lean techniques
and became Qualsys customers in 2017 as part of their commitment to continuous quality improvement.
We caught up with the FCS team at their Chesterfield site to see how they were using Document Manager and Training Records Manager to build a competent, confident, compliant workforce.
Qualsys: Let's rewind 2 years. Why did you want to begin managing your quality electronically?
Gerry McArdle, SHE Manager: Well, the main reason was pressure from our auditors through certification and customer audits.
What they were finding was that our documentation trails and training information was spread out all over the place.
And it wasn't easy to find information when they came along and asked certain questions.
It became clear that we needed something a bit more robust that would take us forward.
FCS manufacture high-quality technical coatings
for automotive manufacturers across the globe
Robert Sheppard, Chief Operating Officer: We are driven by specification. We are driven by auditing processes.
So for us to be able to deliver those things effectively, we needed a mechanism that was able to pull our information together so we could present it - not only to our staff but also to our customers and to our OEMs, the original end manufacturers in the automotive space.
So EQMS was something we looked at.
The team advised the directors and we saw that it answered a lot of the questions we were asking, such as getting information together in one place so we could deliver it in a very corporate and professional way.
Qualsys: What has been the impact of EQMS since then?
Gerry: We started with Training Records Manager.
So people are now very used to completing their training records within the system and they're sent reminders to do so. They can upload certificates if they need to.
Document Manager then sits in the background and people can refer to it as and when they need information.
The biggest thing with Document Manager is we're just finding different uses for it. There's lots of things we put in there which we never even thought of at the beginning.
We needed a mechanism that was able to pull our information together so we could present it in a corporate and professional way to people like BMW and Mercedes.
- Robert Sheppard, Chief Operating Officer
Renault have selected FCS chrome technology
for their Symbioz concept car
Kim Williams, HR Assistant: That's the same with policies and procedures from a HR point of view.
We're able to submit all policies and procedures to EQMS and staff can then read and acknowledge them there and then.
And it's good for us to chase people who haven't done training. We can run a report.
So it's a lot easier now for HR to get that information in.
Our people are now very used to completing their training records within the system and they're sent reminders to do so. They can upload certificates if they need to.
The biggest thing with Document Manager is we're just finding different uses for it. There's lots of things we put in there which we never even thought of at the beginning.
- Gerry McArdle, SHE Manager
Robert: Before, you had to go to HR to ask for your records.
Now you can access them online. That's a major benefit for everyone. People can view their training records and move forward.
It gives people confidence as well, in that they can see the next stage in their development.
That's important. Our staff are very important to us in terms of their development and achieving what they want to achieve through better training, better organisation and so on.
We're able to submit all policies and procedures to EQMS and staff can then read and acknowledge them there and then.
And we can run a report to chase people who haven't done their training.
- Kim Williams, HR Assistant
So for us, it's been a really important factor.
It's about understanding the power of the tool as well. We're only really just scratching the surface at this point of time, and as we move further in there we can see that there's far more types of things we can do with this software than we believed possible when we first started.
So it's a learning process for us at the same time as we understand what we can actually do with this tool.
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