QUALITY

Quality certification used to be a goal: now it is a compulsory starting point. The concept of quality has moved a long way from the time that it meant products produced to a certain standard. ISO 9000 standards made the concept of Quality Assurance widely known: consistent quality to the expectations of customers comes through the application of appropriate procedures.

The current standards (ISO 9001:2000, known as Vision 2000) take the matter a step further forward: the underlying concept is Quality Management through processes which run all the way through the company. Deming, one of the people who started the drive to quality, once said: “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

When Varisco achieved ISO 9001:1994 certification in 2000, the procedures were already drawn up with a view to implementing processes when the time came to upgrade to Vision 2000. Thus the current certification was achieved in 2003 without difficulty.

Quality is not a burden, but a way of life.