St. Louis NTMA Learns About ISO 9001:2000 & TS-16949 Standards

Mid-America Commerce & Industry, Mar 01, 2004

The Greater St. Louis Chapter of the National Tooling & Machining Association (NTMA) held its monthly meeting on March 9th at the Southwest Viking Conference Center in St. Louis.

ISO 9001:2000 and TS-16949 Standards was the topic of the meeting's main presentation.

Leslie Curtis, CQA and Micki Vandeloo from Illinois Manufacturing Extension Center (IMEC) handled the presentation.

The pair noted the updated standards being implemented for ISO. ISO 9000:1994 is being replaced by ISO 9001:2000 and QS 9000 will be replaced by ISO/TS 16949:2000 in 2006.

A wide range of subjects related to certification was covered.

Much of the process relies on the documentation of processes. The IMEC crew covered the reasons that documentation is necessary including: establishing a base platform for measurement; identifying inconsistencles and determining authoritative references and guidelines.

Some of the benefits of certification discussed included: "getting things right the first time ... every time"; improved efficiency; higher quality; customer satisfaction and continuous improvement.

The registration processes and the different types of registrars were also discussed.

The session ended with general questions and answers.

The St. Louis NTMA chapter can be contacted at: (314) 5444678 or ntmastI@aol.com.