ISO 9000 And Borax - A Standard The Customer Can Count On
Ed Docks, manager, Valencia Laboratory and former quality director, explains what the new ISO 9000 registrations at U.S.locations mean to borate users worldwide.
November 1994

Recent quality-driven programs at Borax have had a direct impact on the customer. The force behind the programs has been to ensure delivery of the highest quality borate products. Take for instance, the quality improvement program which led to the virtual elimination of black specks in Borax products. Or the new product storage domes at the Boron mining/production site in California built to improve quality and enhance customer service.

Just a few years ago a strategic business decision was made to obtain ISO registration throughout Borax. First published in 1987, the International Organization for Standardization (Geneva, Switzerland) 9000 series standards provide a framework for documenting a company's quality management and quality assurance systems and a way of registering the program according to international standards. The standard addresses those processes related to product quality, and it also addresses the way Borax does business from mining ore to delivering the final product to customers.

To be ISO registered requires passing an audit conducted by an outside agency. Borax Rotterdam obtained ISO 9002 registration in 1993 and Borax Research earned ISO 9001 registration in 1994. Borax Français is presently registered to ISO 9003, and Borax España is currently working toward registration to the ISO 9002 standard.

In July of 1994 the entire U.S. Borax operation in California, that is, the two operating plants, Wilmington and Boron, and corporate headquarters in Valencia were registered to the ISO 9002 standard. These registrations are significant. The quality functions performed within Borax now are ISO 9000 registered from the time borax is mined at Boron to delivery to customers in the United States, Europe, Asia and to other points on the globe.

Indeed, the ISO registration process can be very difficult and time consuming. That being the case, why would Borax want to expend the efforts to obtain ISO 9000 registration?

Borax firmly believes that there are benefits to its customers by obtaining ISO registration. For example, with written procedures in place, it is no longer a question of what individual has the authority to approve new customer specifications, or approve final shipment of products to customers, or answer customer complaints, or approve new product analytical procedures. All of these functions and the many more covered within the scope of ISO registration have now been documented. The documentation was prepared by the individuals actually doing the work, and during its preparation, there were many cases where employees made constructive suggestions about how their jobs could be improved. Where appropriate, these suggestions were incorporated into the procedures.

The ISO program demands that many of the day-to-day activities that are done are documented and followed. That means it is necessary to examine what is being done with regard to quality within an organization and to write down these procedures.

All this documentation may sound daunting, but in practice it simplifies many procedures and even saves work. U.S. Borax compliance manager Mike Tanouye, who led the expansion of the existing nuclear and pharmaceutical quality program at Wilmington to cover all other product lines plus the bulk terminal, had this experience: "In some of the production processes, we were developing written procedures for the first time. As we analyzed the activities, we were shocked to discover that we were generating many redundant records for no apparent reason. At one point, we identified and discontinued ten unnecessary reports in one month."

One requirement of the ISO 9002 standard demands that the documented procedures must be internally audited. These audits were designed to be similar to the audits performed by an outside auditing organization which actually grants the registration certificate. The internal audits also allowed one to determine if the original written documentation was correct. When nonconformances were noted between written documentation and actual practice, the nonconformance was discussed with the employee actually doing the work so that the procedure could be corrected. This has also led to continuous improvement in many jobs as each job task was examined to determine its utility and accuracy.

In the period leading up to Borax's ISO registration, many customers visited the Boron plant in order to do their own quality audits. Some of these customers had already obtained ISO registration, some had not started the registration process, and others were in the middle of the process. As a result of these visits, Borax "partnered" with these customers, and shared information concerning its quality systems. Customers gave helpful suggestions, and on various occasions, they would ask for copies of documentation for incorporation into their quality systems. In this way, Borax and its customers had a mutual understanding of each other's goals in the area of quality.

While various members of Borax have obtained ISO registration, the quality process is not over. Every six months the registrar will do a surveillance audit of the organization originally registered, and at the end of three years, the entire system will be required to go through the entire audit process. In addition, the standard issued in 1987 was replaced with a new more comprehensive standard in July 1994, and all registered companies will be required to adhere to this new standard. The changes will aid in interpretation of the standard and in some cases demand more rigorous documentation for example in the management review and maintenance areas.

Now that ISO registration has been achieved, Borax invites customers to discuss ISO registration experiences and to visit the facilities to observe the quality systems