Nabertherm celebrates 30 years of DIN ISO 9001 quality certification
Nabertherm GmbH, headquartered in Lilienthal, Germany, has successfully recertified its quality management systems, marking the thirtieth year of the company’s adherence to DIN ISO 9001 quality assurance standards.
Nabertherm was an early adopter of the original standard, where a lean corporate organisation and the manufacture of high-quality products had been a central corporate philosophy. This meant there was already a good basis to implement the corporate goal of quality assurance system.
In May 1987, the first edition of the DIN ISO 9001 standard on the subject of Quality Assurance Systems was published. Five years later, Nabertherm received customer inquiries as to whether it would comply with this standard. At that time, only few companies in Germany had set up a quality assurance system in accordance with the requirements of DIN ISO 9001 and had it certified by an external body. The topic of ‘quality assurance’ was increasingly discussed, but detailed knowledge was not widespread.
In 1992, the Bremen Chamber of Commerce organised an ad hoc working group on quality assurance. A group of companies from the Bremen economic area came together at the event. Although not every participating company understood what DIN ISO 9001 required in detail, the opportunities that could result from the introduction of a quality assurance system were recognised.
The day after the event, Conrad Naber set the corporate goal that Nabertherm should be the first furnace manufacturer in the world to introduce a certified quality assurance system.
Together with three other companies from the working group, and the advisory support of Dr Günther W Diekhöner and his team from the Denkfabrik in Bremen, Nabertherm began to set up and introduce the quality assurance system in the summer of 1992.
Thanks to a good starting point, and the excellent support from the Denkfabrik, the QA system was introduced and in June 1993 an initial certification by Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance could be submitted. On June 24th, 1993, Nabertherm received the first DIN ISO 9001 certificate. At that time, fewer than 500 companies in Germany were certified accordingly. “It has never been possible to reliably determine whether Nabertherm was really the first furnace manufacturer in the world to be certified, but the probability is very high,” the company stated.
Over the years, the term ‘quality assurance’ has become synomymous with the term ‘quality management.’ The requirements of DIN ISO 9001 have also changed, though the basic idea has remained the same: Quality means recognising and fulfilling the needs and expectations of customers.
