About the client
St. Helens-based glass cord manufacturer, NGF Europe Limited, have been using Singlepoint now for well over a decade. We recently caught up with their Quality Manager, Mark Horton, and got him to talk about his experiences with the software.
About the project
Mark kicked off our conversation by reflecting on his early days at the company and the situation in terms of the QMS back then. “When I first joined the company, we were using an existing software system to manage our QMS that frankly did not meet our requirements. The systems were fragmented and not aligned to business needs and requirements due to the disconnect between our QMS and the actual processes themselves.
Clearly, this was a situation that could not be allowed to continue and NGF undertook the search for a solution to these problems and ultimately selected Singlepoint. Mark related the impact that the introduction of Singlepoint made “That has all changed since the implementation of Singlepoint, in fact it has completely transformed the situation. In summary, it has really brought our QMS to life. Singlepoint allows the business to map all of its key processes and to align these with internal requirements, customer requirements and interested parties including IATF16949-2016 and ISO14001-2015.”
“Each and every person in our organization uses Singlepoint and they all know how important it is”
Singlepoint’s ability to support the management of IATF16949 so comprehensively is a hugely important factor for Mark and getting the users involved and fully on-board is a critical part of the successful implementation of IATF. Mark explained the significance; “Each and every person in our organization uses Singlepoint and they all know how important it is to use the information within the system, and only that information.
“Consequently, over the past four years the number of internal and external non-conformances has reduced. I put that down to the fact that all of the key set-up and work instructions are readily available in Singlepoint and that all of our employees use the system, supporting our ‘Right First Time’ approach to manufacture.”
Control and ease of use are two aspects of Singlepoint that recur time and time again when Mark describes his experiences of the system. “The control system gives us a guarantee that our users can only ever be using the correct and latest revision of each document. I can now deliver the right document to the right people at the right time – easily.”
Making the system super-easy-to-use has been delivered courtesy of Visual Navigator, Singlepoint’s own on-board user interface design tool. Mark added, “Singlepoint has improved our ‘Right First Time’ manufacturing. In particular, the Visual Navigator module within Singlepoint has been invaluable. It has enabled us to take people with us on this journey towards best practice and has really proved to be a fantastic communication tool. It has been the key aspect in supporting the excellent levels of user engagement we see today.
We asked Mark to summarise his experiences and opinion on Singlepoint, “In terms of supporting our Quality standards, Singlepoint has been the key platform. I would wholeheartedly recommend the system to support anybody considering and managing a Quality system that is audited against the requirements of ISO9001:2015 and IATF16949:2016. It will get you there faster and put you in a better place thereafter”
