BNL UK and BNL Thailand manufacturing sites are now both certified to the new IATF 16949:2016 quality standard. BNL have worked within the automotive industry for decades complying to strict, high quality automotive standards throughout various incarnations since the 1980’s.
IATF is the new technical specification and quality management system standard for the automotive industry world-wide and replaces the TS16949 certification. The updated standard has more emphasis on some key areas such as risk-based thinking, process control, product traceability, defect prevention, supply chain efficiency, communication, strategic alignment and senior management involvement.
Quality is the cornerstone of BNL operations. After working with top automotive companies for decades, BNL recognises that to be successful the stringent quality demands of this must be consistently met.
“Our automotive customers are world-class and require us, as a supplier, to provide world-class products and services”, stated Iain O’Hare, Quality Manager at BNL. “Achieving compliance to IATF certification was a matter of building upon BNL’s existing quality systems and demonstrating our commitment to maintaining quality and continual improvement throughout our business. We found that in many areas, we were already operating near or to standard.”
Even so, BNL analysed existing systems in preparation and amended and refined systems for 18 months to ensure compliance, with weekly director involvement and monthly progress reviews to examine alignment and progress.
“New customers can have confidence doing business with us and existing customers know we are working to ensure the highest quality and continuous improvement, that we are working to ‘right first time’ principles and that there is less risk and variability in our supply chain and logistics.”
BNL UK supports BNL Thailand in engineering design, tool design, tool transfer, and capacity planning through to production, and as such has also passed the IATF support function audit. The Thailand facility is also IATF certified and both sites are also certified to ISO 9001:2015.
BNL Company Profile
BNL is the world leader in specialist plastic bearing solutions and has been at the cutting-edge of plastic bearing technology for more than 45 years. We design and manufacture high-quality plastic bearings and assemblies for global players in various industries including Steering Columns, Automotive Controls, Domestic Appliances, Cash Handling & ATMs, Mail Handling and CCTV, to name a few.
More than just a bearing, our engineered solutions provide energy efficiencies, cost savings, improved performance and longer product life. Our engineers are experts in developing innovative design solutions for our customers and use the latest software and testing equipment to ensure we provide them with market-leading products.
BNL’s headquarters are in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire with additional offices in the USA, Japan and China. We also have purpose-built manufacturing facilities in Knaresborough, Shanghai and Rayong, Thailand.
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