ISO 9001 to Eelde’s Quality Control
FLORAHOLLAND (30 August 2010) - With the recent qualifications of FloraHolland Eelde for ISO 9001 certificate, all FloraHolland auctions’ quality departments are certified. This provides growers and traders the confidence that quality control is performed transparently and clearly.
“We were already certified for MPS-ECAS, so that our procedures were already properly recorded”, explains Arend Bouwman, head of quality control in Eelde. “In a process like ours the focus was of course on defining the procedures of inspection and re-inspection` these are highly ‘customer oriented’ procedures. The nice thing with ISO is that you may adapt your procedures to the changing needs”.
The certification process started mid 2009, and lasted almost one year. It is granted for three years, but every year there is a checking.
“The ISO certificate forces you to well-define your procedures. For doing this we certainly learned from the experience of our colleagues in other FloraHolland auctions” says Bouwman. “The standards are of course equal at all FloraHolland market places, but there are logistic differences that require different procedures”.
“Our customers are not supposed to notice any difference in our quality service; yet, the ISO procedure provide them with some extra confidence. They also can benefit from the fact that now we are obliged to test our customers’ satisfaction, as a part of the procedure” believes Arend.
“The nice thing with ISO is that you build it up from the working practices, not from-the-top-down” concludes Arend Bouwman.