Northwest Center
Impact Washington Helps Northwest Center Achieve ISO 9001:2000 Certification
Company Profile
Northwest Center (NWC) is a non-profit manufacturer located in Seattle, Washington. The company was founded in 1965 by parents of children with disabilities, who had a mission to expand the skills of people with disabilities through education, rehabilitation and job opportunities.
Situation
NWC operates several commercial enterprises, where revenues generated fund the overall mission and provide training and work opportunities for clients. A business unit of Northwest Center’s enterprise, Facility Support Services (FSS), felt that an ISO certification would give them a definite competitive advantage. FSS provides services such as janitorial, maintenance and grounds keeping services. Implementing ISO 9001:2000 directly affects the 125 employees of FSS through the training and implementation of the continuous improvement concepts that ISO certification requires. The company contacted Impact Washington for assistance.
Solution
After reviewing the project requirements, Impact Washington teamed with South Seattle Community College to provide JSP funding for the project, and provided the training and establishment of an ISO 9001:2000 quality system for Facility Support Services within one year. This was an aggressive approach, but necessary as certification was critical for the bid submitted by FSS to provide the janitorial and grounds maintenance services for the new US Federal Courthouse in Seattle, which is currently under construction. General Service Administration’s (GSA) regional management accepted the commitment to this project and awarded the new Seattle Courthouse contract to FSS, a division of Northwest Center, and the company is prepared to provide these ISO level quality services in 2004.
Results
Facility Support Services has seen increased quality of service to their current customer base by utilizing a quality management system that is structured around a disciplined set of processes. Specific measurable impact includes a 9% increase in revenue with a 27% increase in profitability. Additionally, and more importantly to the central mission of providing employment opportunities for adults with disabilities, Northwest Center is currently 4% above the mandated 75% ratio of disabled employees to total staff. There has been a marked increase in service quality and overall customer satisfaction due to the education and training of the staff to operate specific processes of the system (i.e. corrective action, control of non-conformity, all operational processes, management review, etc.). 125 existing FSS employees were successfully trained, as estimated in the original JSP application, and all the curriculum and materials for training future employees were developed. The number of employees is expected to double within five years, creating 125 new positions.
