Kawasaki Precision Machinery

Achieving complete control over ISO9001:2000 with Powerway Suite 2000.

Kawasaki Precision Machinery is a leading specialist in the manufacture and sale of hydraulic machinery. They are exporters of pumps and motors worldwide and supply to most of the major manufacturers of excavators and marine deck equipment. Based in Plymouth, Devon, KPM (UK) Ltd employs around 240 employees and has been established since 1994. They are IS0 14001 and ISO 9001:2000 accredited. They are also accredited to the Investors in People Award.

When Glenn Miller, Quality Assurance Engineer at KPM (UK) Ltd first heard of Powerway’s Suite 2000 Solutions, he saw the possibility of automating significant elements of their quality management system (QMS). Glenn explains: “We were using a manual system, incorporating Lotus Notes and Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets, which was time consuming and did not allow us to track changes. In particular, as far as procedures were concerned, it was very difficult to see how a change within one procedure would affect other procedures. We also had to keep manual lists of which employees had which documents or procedures and it was very unsecure and difficult to maintain”.

KPM (UK) Ltd started using Powerway’s Suite 2000 modules Document Control, Audit Manager, Corrective Action and Procedure/Instruction/Policy Writer in 2001.

The improvements and the efficiency that these modules brought to KPM (UK) Ltd were enormous.

Glenn adds: “Document Control and Document Manager are brilliant! They have allowed us to save countless hours and these modules allow us to track documents, to update them and to communicate it to our users in a very short period of time. By the click of a button I can see who has paper copies, electronic copies and it is therefore very easy to update these users with new revisions”.

Another more recent addition to KPM’s modules is Powerway’s Suite 2000 Gauge Manager. Glenn explains: “We used an old Cardex system and Lotus Notes databases. Gauge Manager has helped us greatly in tracking gauges and recording the history of gauge performance. It has also helped our reporting and our accreditation agency has been very impressed with the way we can easily check the status on our gauges and recall them”.

Other benefits perceived by KPM (UK) Ltd include:

• The ability to tailor fields to suit their needs,
  
• The clone gauge facility which saves time when adding similar or identical gauges to the system,
  
• The ability to input calibration test points (which saves going back to British Standards to check tolerancing),
• The management of master gauges and the ability to store in the gauge record which masters have been used, which is very good for traceability for ISO 9001.
  

KPM (UK) Ltd have been using Powerway’s Suite 2000 for 4 years now and are very positive about the results they have been able to achieve.

Syncronology are Powerway’s exclusive distributors in the UK and are working continuously to enhance and improve their customer offering.