A hat trick of certifications for a supply chain management client
A niche company in the UK supply chain business, Urban Logistics concentrate on the ‘last mile’ of delivery for specialist equipment to site throughout the UK. As one of the only companies supplying and managing the logistics of these goods in the country, they occupy a unique space in the market.
As part of their long-term strategy, our client wanted a simple and effective management system to deal with ISO 9001 with suitable protocols introduced. They needed something that would also support their strategy to gain ISO 14001 and 45001certification afterwards.
3
ISO Standards
1
Global Pandemic
QFactorial Service offering
Implementation
We began by using our signature Gap & Synergy Assessment with Action Plan to provide the client with a foundation for the project. We split the tasks with Q! sorting “the ISO stuff” and the client focusing on improving their internal processes to reflect their IT system and the work we were doing with them. The clients were keen, wanting to learn and understand everything in order to become self-sufficient in the longer term. To this end we assisted in the coaching and training of their internal resources to continue the quality journey once our role came to an end. The client was very keen to get it right, to do ISOs for the right reasons and not just a tick-box exercise.
It was interesting to see the specialist nature of this industry - the transportation required to move forklifts is rare in the UK and so the supply chain is limited. It definitely is not your standard truck or loading process! Some forklifts are 7m tall! Covid delayed the program of work for the client so it took a couple of years to complete instead of the estimated 1 year, but despite these challenges the client persevered and we completed all 3 ISO standards. It was lovely to work with a client who still put quality at the fore when dealing with such challenging outside forces.
The client was successfully certified to ISOs 9001, 14001 and 45001, showing dedication to the quality cause through a pandemic. After certification, QFactorial were asked to stay on as consultants in order to support the internal auditing process.
