Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1185676
26 PCB007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2019 the new equipment purchases, but there are still people involved, and it often comes to a point where these people have to inspect it and understand the quality requirements. As you mentioned, what may be golden brown to you may be burnt to me. So, how do we capture that and figure out the right blend? Johnson: You made a couple of interesting points. One is that the ISO 9000 process can be used to pass down knowledge from older generations to newer employees with respect to process knowledge. I haven't heard anyone else in my conversations cite ISO 9000 as an information repository. Viter: Yes, that is interesting because for ISO 9001:2015, the big improvement is risk man- agement—identifying the risks and mitigating them. Obviously, one big risk for us was losing critical knowledge, so that was a huge piece of our focus on our quality management system. Kuretich: We uncovered the critical nature of this risk through our management review pro- cess and have started to document these items as well as put some plans in place so that our employees will be better equipped for the long haul. Everyone wins. Johnson: Let's talk about that a little bit be- cause your certification experience is fresh. Can you give me a couple of practical exam- ples where the ISO process is going to help im- prove your information repository? Kuretich: We created a process for our employ- ee training records, which we have for every employee; they're accessible by HR and lead- ership, and they're a living document; as peo- ple are cross-trained, the documents are up- dated. Our recordkeeping is one avenue from my world that has been greatly improved; ev- eryone got on board and recognized the val- ue. We'll take it even further and use it in our performance review process, which is pretty exciting. The management review and the risks that Nancy talked about are eye-openers because 20–25 participants on that team are building the program, getting the paperwork, and sharing their concerns to get them all in one place. Viter: It helps people take responsibility for looking at their process and assessing what the risks are and what is the likelihood that it will happen. If it is a likely thing, what is the catastrophic level if it were to occur? ISO requires a management review where all of the process owners come to the table, where we look at their KPI metrics and assess their current high-risk element—whether it's hu- man resources, equipment, or organizational knowledge that they have determined as their most critical step to mitigate the risk. Then, as leadership, we apply a priority to those risks, recognizing that you can't do everything at once. Having everybody in one room together to discuss these matters helps so that we speak the same language and know where everyone else's pain points are. For example, one concern was ensuring that everybody in the sales and customer support area used the same procedures and had one best way of doing things. In essence, when we speak to customers, we can't tell them two different things. As a team, we did a remark- able job getting those processes documented and training to them so that if something falls through the cracks, there is a place to go to say, "What did our process say, and how can we improve it?" Micronic Mach-2 Nano Series drilling machine at Sunstone Circuits.