Certification of real-life Practice

Until recently, the standard for QM systems in the automotive industry was ISO/TS 16949. It defines the additional industry-specific requirements for the production of series parts and spare parts in the automotive industry. This has been replaced by IATF 16949. This change has resulted in new, more challenging tasks, modifications and additional requirements for the industry, companies and their employees.

SHWire – Schwering & Hasse Elektrodraht GmbH – successfully completed the transition audit for IATF 16949:2016 in early 2018 and is one of the first companies in the enamelled wire sector to have passed this new automotive standard with flying colours in an external audit.

This shows the outstanding basis that SHWire deploys to meet the stringent requirements of the automotive industry and even exceed some of these.

As part of the IATF certification process, we took advantage of the opportunity to extend this level even further in order to achieve the best possible quality and safety for our customers, as well as for our internal processes and procedures.

Like with the previous ISO/TS 16949 standard, IATF 16949 builds on ISO 9001 but includes additional requirements that are specific to the automotive industry. IATF 16949 thus focuses not only on customers, customer satisfaction and a continuous improvement process, but also on risk and opportunity management within the company. These points have long been a fundamental part of the philosophy at SHWire and the focus of the IATF on customer satisfaction and safety management provides us with encouragement as we continue our day-to-day work.

The IATF pursues the clear strategic goal of ensuring that the stringent requirements for quality, product safety and legal compliance are met consistently throughout the supply chain. This includes making products safer and more reliable, meeting customer requirements and, finally, further developing and improving the processes and documented information.

The improvement of system and process quality has the clear goal of optimising customer satisfaction, identifying potential risks and errors at an early stage both in production and in the supply chain, and rectifying the causes of these in good time with corrective measures.
This enables us to meet the growing requirements in terms of product quality, productivity and competitiveness and to also improve performance for our customers.

At SHWire, the IATF certification provides us with encouragement to continue adhering to our quality strategy and to consistently develop it further for the benefit of our customers and our company.

This quality strategy is what we at SHWire put into practice every day – not only in relation to products, but also in the processes, procedures, our service and the combined efforts of the SynFlex Group to serve our customers. The excellent result from the IATF certification is thus a clear endorsement of what we are doing.

All of the aspects of the IATF 16949 certification that have been mentioned here are therefore not only benefiting customers from the automotive industry, but also each and every customer of SHWire and the SynFlex Group.