Nel: Was certified on three standards in eleven months

11 months after the certification process was initiated, NEL Hydrogen was certified to ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001. Auditors from DNV gave the company five out of five possible points when they recently integrated a new location into the certificate.

In 2019, NEL Hydrogen decided to certify itself to the standards for quality management ISO 9001, external environment ISO 14001 and working environment ISO 45001. The motivation for becoming certified was twofold.

“First, certification was necessary to deliver on a number of contracts. In addition, a system had to be in place to support the company’s plans to grow effectively,” says Support Director Bente Hallingstad. She is responsible for the work with quality control, HSE, HR and compliance in the company.

Since they began the process of building a management system and putting a good deviation system in place, they have increased their number of employees by over 50 percent.

– The help we received from 4human TQM when we were going to start the process towards certification was really gold. Through some good and effective workshops with Smart TQM "We quickly got a structure for the work in place, and we got the management team on board. The motivation we got from this was absolutely crucial in being able to carry out the implementation of the system," says Bente Hallingstad.

Active use of the management system

The system was implemented quickly, and certification was achieved in an impressively short time. Yet, the company also managed to build a current system that continues to be an important working tool for the company. TQM Enterprise is an important basis for monthly reporting to the management team.

Every month we review processes and procedures, and see if they are in use and if improvements have been made. The non-conformance records are also an important part of the reporting and improvement suggestions are used for further development of our products. In addition, we use the system for management reviews twice a year.

Both the incident module, work instructions and procedures are in active use by all employees in the company. With the mobile app, it is easy to register deviations and incidents in production. Over the past two years, around 1,500 different types of incidents have been reported from today's 120 employees.

Stable system and reliable supplier

The company's experience with 4human TQM as a supplier has been very positive. The feedback is that they have experienced good support with quick feedback. Change requests that are promised in "the next version" are delivered as promised.

– It is also a very stable system, and we are very dependent on it. We also have shifts here at night, and it is important that the system has good uptime 24/7, adds QA Manager Ingrid Flåta.

They experience TQM Enterprise as an intuitive system that has been easy to implement.

It's a simple system, and that's also one of our core values at NEL Hydrogen – simplicity is the key , says Bente Hallingstad.