Case Studies
Hepworth Rail International
Left to Right: Ron Adams – Rail Project Manager, Linda Bates – Hepworth’s Quality Manager and David Scrimshire - TEC.
Hepworth Rail International, based in Redditch, are specialists in the design and manufacture of bespoke heavy duty screen wipe systems, washing equipment and associated control systems to the rail industry. Supplying many key customers worldwide such as Bombardier, Siemens, Alstom, CAF, CCC, and Rotem have succesfully achieved IRIS standards with assistance from the Rail Business Improvement programme.
Manfacturing concerns
Hepworth Rail’s strategic plans were dependent upon both maintaining their existing European and Worldwide customer base and developing further this international level of supply direct to the major vehicle manufacturers within the rail industry.
Hepworth also recognised that maintaining and developing its quality standards, design and business efficiency, responsiveness and effectiveness; thus achieving total customer satisfaction, was the route to grow the market lead over low cost economies.
MAS action
Hepworth Rail International was aready accredited to the ISO 9001: 2000 quality standard through the LRQA certification body. In addition to this accreditation it was necessary for Hepworth to obtain approvals through each individual rolling stock manufacturer’s supplier quality assurance processes. Discussions between Hepworth, MAS-WM and TEC Transnational concluded that the route forward was to develop Hepworth’s business processes to achieve full accreditation to the newly developed International Rail Industry Standard (IRIS), prior to it becoming a mandatory requirement.
Diagnostic
The IRIS standard requirements affect all aspects of a business; commercial, project management, design & development, manufacturing, commissioning and maintenance. Hepworth Rail, supported by TEC, progressively created a fully integrated business system built upon an effective process approach.
Recognising that the step up to the IRIS standard requirements was significant, a key area of focus was the shop-floor supervision. As with many SME manufacturers, the supervision had progressed primarily due to their technical skills, rather than their ability to manage a team fully effectively. With a focused process approach, the supervisors and operators were readily involved in upgrading and standardising their activities.
Results
Conformance to the IRIS clauses requires auditors to assign a points score to various assessment elements. This process had the stimulated the activity of continual improvement and provided the platform to incorporate lean enterprise and other best practices.
The LRQA assessor took a full 5 days to examine and audit Hepworth Rail’s business management system, on route to accreditation; with a most creditable achievement of a final points score of 90%: reflecting the level of top down commitment and involvement at all stages of implementation.
IRIS standard is a single, common certification scheme is the future for the rail industry and this is reinforced with rail industry by major vehicle and equipment manufacturers such as Bombardier, Alstom, Siemens, and AnsaldoBreda signing a joint declaration negating the need to undertake any business management system audits at equipment manufacturers having valid IRIS certificates
"The Benefits of IRIS have been huge and although the timeframe for achieving certification was extremely tight and the workload immense, thanks to all the staff at Hepworth Rail and the support of WM-MAS and TEC International it was most definitely worth it"
Linda Bates
Hepworth Rail International
"This most significant project at Hepworth Rail has demonstrated that, with total commitment and involvement of all personnel in the business, implementation of the new IRIS rail industry standard, will deliver not only the benefits of accreditation; but wide ranging benefits to the normal daily business operations."
Ron Adams
Rail Project Manager, MAS-WM
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