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[May 2001]
Quality Standard for Ryder at Wedgwood
Ryder's contract with Wedgwood has now been awarded the ISO 9001-2000 quality standard. Under a 15-year agreement, Ryder (Slough, Berks, England) operates Wedgwood's 135,000 square foot, 12 million purpose-built Global Processing Centre in Stone, Staffordshire. The GPC processes up to 100,000 items a day from 10,000 products lines and three million individual items.
The world-wide distribution operation was put under the microscope by assessors under the Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance scheme, the world's leading registrar, and came through with flying colours, reports Ryder.
Contract General Manager Paul Probert said that the quality assessment covered all aspects of the Wedgwood GPC operation. He added: "This was a stringent assessment and it's a real accomplishment to achieve the new standard".
He further explained that under ISO 9001-2000 assessors sought evidence that the contract continuously sought improvements in its operation. He commented: "They want to see that processes are not only in place but that we continuously audit them to ensure they are still suitable and that we can deal with problems when they arise and even pre-empt them.
"In effect, they want to know we aren't sitting on our laurels and are always seeking to improve things."
Neil Houldsworth - the Quality and Certification Manager with Ryder Europe - said that the Ryder contract at Wedgwood achieved the new, more stringent ISO 9001-2000 standard in under a year. He added: "This certificate was one of only seven advance approvals to ISO 9001-2000 issued by Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance across all industries at the time of its release - a splendid achievement by the contract team".
Ryder has worked alongside Wedgwood to establish an operation dramatically reducing lead times and producing significant cost savings. Paul Probert added: "This is a quality led operation with procedures designed for constant and consistent achievement of the key performance indicators agreed with Wedgwood".
Wedgwood Operations Director, George Stonier, believed that Ryder had provided his company with solutions permitting it to exceed customer expectations. "Working in partnership with Ryder's distribution management experts has allowed us to accelerate order fulfilment, while reducing labour costs by 15% and will enable us to achieve our ambitious inventory reduction targets," he said.
ENDS