Renew Energy is proud to announce that its Remanufacturing Division has received their ISO 9001 Certification, which they were awarded in October of 2022.
ISO 9001 Certification is, according to its website, “a set of five quality management systems standards that help organizations ensure they meet customer and other stakeholder needs within statutory and regulatory requirements related to a product or service.”
The certification is done by a third party, and it ensures that customers and stakeholders are getting the absolute best service possible.
“ISO 9001 is a globally-recognized quality management system,” said Paul Terwee, the Senior QC for RENEW’s Remanufacturing Division. “I’ve always explained it in this way: You do what you say, and you say what you do.”
It’s a series of steps and procedures that ensure quality control and excellence in customer service, and it’s just the latest certification that RENEW has received.
“It’s creating processes and procedures and following those every time, you’re doing audits and making sure that the technicians are following the processes,” Terwee shared. “We’re doing all the documentation and all the paperwork. And it assures customers that they’re getting what they’re paying for and making sure that they can be confident in the quality at Renew. They always have been, but having this certificate proves that we went through all the steps and had an independent auditor come through to make sure that we’re doing everything we say we’re doing.”
When dealing with the kind of components that Renew Energy works with, it’s imperative to have others check, double check, and triple check the work. That is, in a nutshell, what this ISO 9001 certification does.
“It helps us stand out,” Terwee said. “I don’t believe many of our competitors have this and it’s something, with us being a very specialized industry, not everybody can do. Not everybody can just work on wind turbine gearboxes and main shafts. It really takes a lot of time and effort to get everything documented and to follow all of those procedures.”
It also stands out to clients. Companies such as Siemens Gamesa, GE, Next Era, and more, specifically ask if the companies working with them are ISO certified. It’s a deciding factor when these companies are looking to offer their business. These customers also see a direct benefit themselves.
“It holds us to a higher standard,” Terwee offered. “We complete a job, we give them, along with the component, the report of everything that happened. Historically, the ball sort of gets dropped on reports and making sure all the t’s have been crossed and all the I’s have been dotted. But holding us to this higher standard, they can get this documentation, and they can have all the proof in the world that we did what we said, and it gives them a little peace of mind when we’re presenting these components.”
Right now, it’s just Renew’s Remanufacturing Division that is ISO 9001 certified, but the goal is for the entirety of the company to also get certified. That will happen; it’s just a matter of time.
When it was first suggested that the Remanufacturing Division do the work to get certified, Terwee knew that the best way to approach it with the employees was not as a dictation. Telling employees that they have to do something is not the best way to manage people, and Terwee knew that.
“With the employees working out on the shop floor, it’s important to actually build a rapport with them,” he stated. “It’s not just, ‘Here’s a change, this is how we’re gonna do it.’ It’s talking with them and saying, ‘Okay, how would you feel about this change? Is there anything that you think would work better?’ It’s getting their opinion as well. I mean, they’re the ones out there doing the work. You can have everything documented that you want, but, at the end of the day, they’re gonna do it the best way they think it needs to be done. So it’s working with them and finding that middle ground. But it went really well. The technicians picked up on the changes that we needed, and the managers helped enforce those changes once I could prove that they would be a benefit.”
The biggest benefit, of course, is continuing to prove that Renew Energy is the premier wind and solar energy maintenance company in the United States. It is well on its way to proving that.
And they have the documents to prove it.