Quality assurance in Noliac Motion

Noliac Motion has during 2001-2002 drawn up our quality manual according to ISO 9000:2000 and has since then been working in accordance herewith.

Our quality manual is divided into four levels: management, procedures, instructions and templates. The system describes all our quality processes from the first customer contact, over designing of new products according to customer requirements, manufacturing the product and finally shipping to customer.

To ensure the same high quality on all products several inspection tests are defined before or after critical quality processes. In these inspections selected parameters are tested and must be approved before the product is released to the next process. This system is implemented both for the specification phase as well as through out our 25 manufacturing processes, starting with incoming inspection of critical raw materials, inspection of selected intermediate product parameters up to the final inspection control. We do operate with a training and skill matrix for our production people to ensure they have the right competencies prior to operating a process or an inspection on their own.
 
To ensure constantly improvement of our product quality we have implemented different feedback loops. These are firstly implementation of direct improvements to eliminate a specific error to happen again for both nonconforming products found in one of our internal inspections as well as in claims coming from customers. Secondly we do an analysis minimum once a year on all closed nonconforming product as well as all closed claims over the latter 12 months, to disclose if there are a systematic trend or a pattern and to eliminate their causes.

Further we do a batch to batch trend analysis of numerous process and product parameters on selected products that Noliac repeatedly has produced since 2001. This has been a great advance to Noliac in several cases, where even small variations in either raw material, environmental or process parameters have been disclosed and corrected before the variations have had impact on other customer products.
 
To ensure improvements and changes in procedures and working instructions are implemented and followed we do internal audits.

We also have external audits from our customers.

One important customer is Codman Neuro Sciences, a subsidiary of the medical company Johnson and Johnson, producing drug pumps that are implanted into the human body. Two quality people, one from Codman Neuro Scieces and one from Johnson and Johnson, have in 2004 been auditing Noliac Motion for a 3 days audit. This has lead Noliac Motion to a unique position where we are now an approved supplier of piezo products to Johnson and Johnson.