DUDLEY’S interior fit out and display specialist, The Alan Nuttall Partnership, has become one of the primary leaders in the manufacturing industry in the UK to be accredited to the new ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management Standard.

The partnership has been committed to quality throughout its 51 years in business and has implemented transformational changes around both process and reporting to achieve the standard in record time.

Speaking of the achievement, quality manager Jane Peevor-Evans, said: “We are delighted to have successfully achieved this accreditation more than 15 months before the deadline.

“All of the team agree that this has focused us to look for better ways forward and to take out the non-value added processes, to save both time and money.

“We are excited to continue implementing learning points, so that continuous improvements can be identified and addressed for our customers and the partnership.

“I would also like to thank the entire team at Nuttalls for the commitment, support and hard work to enable us to achieve such a prestigious accolade.”

The ISO 9001:2015 accreditation is described by Nigel Croft, chairman of the ISO subcommittee that developed and revised the standard, as an “evolutionary rather than a revolutionary” process.

He said: “We are just bringing ISO 9001 firmly into the 21st century. The earlier versions of ISO 9001 were quite prescriptive, with many requirements for documented procedures and records.

“In the 2000 and 2008 editions, we focused more on managing processes.

“ISO 9001:2015 is even less prescriptive than its predecessor, focusing instead on performance. We have achieved this by combining the process approach with risk-based thinking, and employing the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle at all levels in the organisation.”