Octavo Systems is now ISO9001 Certified

We are proud to announce that Octavo Systems is officially ISO 9001:2015 certified, passing the requirements with no deviations found.

What does this mean for you?:

ISO standard 9001:2015 is the defacto quality management system (QMS) standard in the electronics industry. It ensures that an organization demonstrates the ability to consistently provide products and services that meet customer and regulatory requirements. It also sets up an organization to scale, and stimulate continual improvement in all aspects of the business.

ISO (International Standards Organization) is an organization that started some 70 years ago with a goal of ensuring products and services are safe, reliable, and of good quality. They have continued to grow rapidly and globally. ISO9001:2015 is one of over 20,000 published standards covering everything from the manufacturing of shoes, Wi-Fi networks, marine architecture, road construction, medical packaging, toy safety, and more.

Being ISO 9001:2015 certified means you can trust that Octavo Systems will provide quality products and is positioned to be a strong partner for the future.

The ISO Journey

18 months ago.

In the spring of 2018 the President of Octavo Systems challenged the company to pursue and achieve an ISO certification to support our Mission: To simplify the design and manufacturing of electronics systems by delivering innovative high quality System-in-Package (SiP) solutions.

What?

The core staff at Octavo Systems is composed of skilled professionals with decades of experience in Fortune 500 electronics businesses. In Marketing, Sales, Design, Operations, Applications, Leadership, etc., the basic skills and processes needed to smoothly execute are ingrained and second nature to our team. However, one of the ISO goals is for an organization to be able to provide continuous support if anyone wins the lottery and fails to ever return to work. To be able to reach that goal the processes and guidelines must be documented into a procedure, for example; “How To Process an Order Entry” or “How to Verify a Design Meets Requirements” , etc. so that a competent, trained individual can perform the task described.

Who?

The first major step in our ISO process was to hire a consultant. This person, already known to many at our company from prior work experiences, has many years of experience guiding businesses through the dark ISO forests to the ultimate goal: ISO Certification. He’s also a tough auditor with a keen eye for detail.

We assembled a team of the key personnel in the various disciplines: Marketing, Sales, Design, Operations, Applications, and Leadership. Following the ISO9001 guidelines and also the Plan, Do, Check and Act methodology, each department documented how their discipline receives inputs, what deliverables they generate and for who, and how various functions are performed. For this final part, I wanted to be sure they described what we are doing on a daily basis that enables us to provide the highest quality System-in-Package devices.

This was not a fun part of our ISO Journey. Spending 2-4 hours a week writing down how one does his/her job, in enough detail so that an competent , trained individual could perform the task described in the procedure, was not on top of anyone’s favorite experiences. A total of over 40 Procedures were generated, reviewed, revised, etc. I became so unpopular I was practically ostracized; no one would eat lunch with me anymore, and I began to worry and walk a little faster if I saw more than 2 of the team behind me on my way to my car each evening.

Next?

The ISO 9001:2015 Standard has 10 chapters describing requirements for every part of the business from Operations to Leadership to Planning. In order to achieve ISO certification all requirements must be addressed. To be successful we needed not only procedures documented that addressed all requirements in all 10 chapters, but also an overarching Quality Systems Manual. To determine how we fared our consultant performed audits like the one we would have to pass to achieve ISO certification – these are called Internal Audits. They find weak spots in the procedures we documented, which are then addressed, and another Internal Audit is performed. We went through a total of three Internal Audits, and several mini-audits. We also added someone, trained in Internal Audits, to the team.

FINIS

After we completed the Internal Audits, I reasoned that we had prepared well and that the team was ready for the real test, the two External Audits needed for ISO Certification. The first External Audit is to examine our Documentation to determine if we have enough procedural documentation of all our working disciplines to run our business to ISO standards. The second External Audit is where the rubber meets the road: is there Evidence that we are following all the procedures we have documented. Needless to say we passed both with flying colors!

More?

This Journey is not over, it is really just beginning. Key Process Indicators (KPI), Risk and opportunity identification, customer inputs, and other factors will keep us on this journey toward continual improvement and continuing to exceed our customers’ expectations.

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