Integrating a User-Friendly Quality Management System with other Business Systems

The Challenge

Brightwell Dispensers Ltd were founded in 1947 by two brothers recently out of the Fleet Air Arm. The first dispenser was made from cast aluminium for the Sternol Oil Co., now Elf Oil, who were making hand cleaning products.

Over the following decades Brightwell have grown to become Europe’s leading independent manufacturer of soaps and paper, as well as a complimentary range of peristaltic pumps for industrial, dishwashing, laundry and other applications. The company often works in partnership with major corporates to develop exclusive ranges of equipment but in parallel to this is always seeking to improve and expand it’s own range of dispensers from which the bulk of their revenue is made. The company pride themselves on being market leaders developing new technologies and features; the new SuperC dispenser recently won the Innovation Award at the French Europropure exhibition and the new range of peristaltic pumps ‘BrightStar’ is to be launched at ISSA Interclean this month.

Brightwell have a manufacturing philosophy of bringing the manufacturing processes in-house. This not reduces the outflow of funds to suppliers but also offers improved control over their supply chain, making for more flexibility in manufacturing.

This philosophy has led to the introduction of an in-house injection moulding plant where most of the dispenser components are made. Since then the electronic side of the business has benefited from the same philosophy as flow solder and automatic test equipment (ATE) has been followed by laser guided assembly equipment and most recently surface mount ‘pick and place’ equipment. Brightwell now produce over 90% of their components in-house.

Brightwell obtained registration to BS EN ISO 9002: 1994 in 1996. However, over the next two years the enormous burden imposed on the company by maintaining that standard became apparent. Paperwork. The Group Quality Assurance Manager, Phil Metcalfe, takes up the story.

"Over the two years after registration we were working to improve our quality culture and systems. Significantly much of this work involved producing more paperwork. Bought in and ‘in-house’ components became better specified, key suppliers had quality based assessments and quality based contracts issued to them, and most importantly detailed specifications of all our products were being produced."

"This, combined with the vast range of different processes the company is involved in and our wide product base had caused an explosion in the amount of documentation in the company. The quality manual, just under a lever arch file in size in 1996 had expanded to nearly two by 1998. We worked out that around a third of the time of the quality department was being devoted to producing, updating and maintaining the work instructions, specification and procedures involved."

The answer at first was a software package designed specifically for quality assurance. This vastly reduced the burden on the quality department, but over the following years became very much an enclosed system, separate from the rest of the company.

"Our documentation system had become something of blind alley. People referred to the documents when they needed to and day to day forms and instructions were obtained from the system, but the system was too distinct from the other company systems."

The Solution

In 2001 Brightwell started to discuss how to address the problem. The company has always been at the forefront of Internet based activity, particularly in marketing, and an Intranet seemed a logical extension of this.

"We established a ‘wish list’ of goals for a new Intranet; it had to be user friendly and to facilitate the availability of information throughout the company by grouping documents logically and having a powerful search facility. The Intranet had to be capable of being made available over the Internet to our internationally based sales team, to our stockists and our key suppliers. Practically speaking it had therefore to be capable of being corporately branded, it had to look ours. Finally, it had to be easy to maintain and capable of controlling documents to ISO 9000 standards were necessary and to a simpler level where not."

After examining three or four packages on the market Brightwell settled on EQMS from Qualsys Ltd.

"EQMS did all of the things we wanted. Crucially though it was remarkably user friendly – this is vital as all our staff from the MD down to the shop floor use the system daily. It doesn’t just control our quality documents properly but it also makes all our other documentation readily available without having to subject it all to full QA style document control."

Smart corporate branding of the package has produced a system that looks as good as it works, and it looks and feels more than smart enough to be made available to outside users.

"The directory structure and search engine are easy to use; documents can be grouped together and the facility to reference a document more than once in the structure means that users have alternative places to find documents. EQMS also has no client-based software, using Internet Explorer to allow users to access the system. This was also important to us, reducing the amount of IT department support required which is important for an SME."

The Benefits

"It took us about 3 months to decide that EQMS was the best package we’d seen, and it’s taken us about as long again to get our document base uploaded onto the system. We launched the Brightwell Intranet at the beginning of April, when the Intranet replaced not only our electronic quality manual but and range of information sources built up by different parts of the company. SO far it has been enthusiastically received.

"Now that we have got the system up and running we are starting to add further documents to it. We think we’ll end up with about 4,000 documents ranging from digital photographs and video to test based procedures, flow charts and process maps. We have started linking Internet sites into the software as well, competitors sites, suppliers sites, customers sites and useful web based resources. It’s a bit like having a corporate "Favourites" list".

Opening the system up to an internet link is scheduled for this month. This will allow the internationally based sales team access to technical resources, customer and product details and a wide range of other information previously only available to our staff in Newhaven. After this, the stockists will follow, giving them access to some of the same information. Finally, key suppliers will be included, allowing purchase specifications and other information available on line to them as well.

Brightwell are looking for new ways to use the software to improve their business. "For us, the software is all about moving information quickly and efficiently. Although we already have some electronic records, SPC software connected directly to test equipment for example, we believe we can reduce the amount of paperwork we still have around the company in the form of records and data still further using EQMS. Audit reports, customer complaints and performance indicators are being placed on the Intranet to allow managers instant access to the information. Even reports from our BSI assessors are available on the intranet."

"We have not even started using all the features EQMS has available. The Change Manager and Audit Manager are still to be fully exploited, so we expect more productivity gains over the next year. We expect a very quick payback on the software.