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Aurobay's Skövde Factory achives IATF 16949:2016 and ISO 14001:2015 certification

 

Aug. 30 2022

It was smiles at the Aurobay Production Site in Skövde when Bureau Veritas were invited to meet Aurobay colleagues from the Quality and Environmental teams, as well as members of the Skövde Management team and other IATF project members. The occasion? The presentation of Aurobay Skövde’s newly awarded IATF 16949:2016 and ISO 14001:2015 Certificates.

The certification journey started at the end of 2020 and Aurobay became a standalone entity in January 2021, after previously having been part of Volvo Car Corporation. With its headquarters in Gothenburg, Aurobay has manufacturing sites in Skövde, Sweden and Zhangjiakou, China.

The approximately 40 people from Aurobay who were present for the occasion are a testimony to the amazing team effort of building on the heritage of Volvo Cars while creating something unique and special for Aurobay.

THE JOURNEY TO CERTIFICATION

When asked how it feels, Annica Johansson, Head of Quality & Sustainability at Aurobay smiles and exclaims “I’m of course very, very happy. It’s a fantastic feeling”.

Bjarne Hammar, Head of Manufacturing in Skövde tells us how it’s been an interesting journey to create their own identity. By using the systems from Volvo Cars as a starting point they have been able to simplify and adapt the processes. “When we were part of Volvo Cars we were told what the processes and the way of working were. As Aurobay, we had to understand the whole process, including everything from sales to aftermarket and find our own ways of working. Being a smaller company has helped us with a shorter decision-making process, enabling us to complete the work and achieve the certification in time”.

Carina Henriksson, Global Management System and Audit expert, also emphasizes the need to invest the right number of resources in a project like this and underlines the importance of separating themselves from Volvo Cars. “We have gone from inheriting instructions and systems to now having control over them”.

BENEFITS FROM IATF 16949 AND ISO 14001

Annica Johansson tells us how the team at Aurobay has created their own company culture and how important it is to continuously improve their ways of working. “IATF 16949 is a manual on how to start a company. The time had come for us to follow it, and it’s not more complicated than that. It’s helped us in many areas and hopefully it will continue to assist us to be more efficient and a good partner to our clients”.

The teams could early see that great effort and resources were required to reach the level of compliance needed to achieve the certification. This journey has brought the company together and it’s been key to work cross-functionally, setting all the teams and doing the hard work required to succeed. Annica tells us how it’s been a huge effort by a large number of people but emphasizes that they are not done. “Now we need to continuously improve, starting from our good base line,” she says.

Aurobay’s Environmental Management System and the ISO 14001 Certification is also a journey. Roland Lord, Head of Aftermarket & Sustainability tells us how they have started with the foundation, practicalities roles and responsibilities and how they are now moving forward to increase competence and awareness throughout the organization.

Petra Dahlberg, Global Environmental Manager elaborates further “ISO 14001 is best practice so there’s a lot of good advice on how to work, and it’s helped us a lot. We also have the challenge of ensuring that we work in the same way in Skövde as in Zhangjiakou. An important part for the Aurobay identity has been the development of new methods to identify new environmental aspects, as well as verifying previously identified aspects, to ensure they are relevant”.

CONTINOUS IMPROVEMENTS

Annica again emphasizes how they are just getting started, “We have a road map for environmental topics throughout the year and moving into next year. We have closed the IATF project but it’s important that we continue to keep them alive. We have created lots of new processes so the next step is to adapt and improve them for the benefit of ourselves and our customers.

Bjarne continues by saying “We really want to be agile and always improve. The balance will be to follow the standards and work with continuous improvement, and at the same time to keep up the pace of improvements and innovations to meet and exceed our clients’ expectations. The certifications and work with the standards shall be used to improve our business without slowing us down”.

Finally Bjarne exclaims that everyone in this room deserves to be on stage “They’ve put so much work into this and it’s really a team effort by the outstanding team of people at Aurobay!”