Spartech’s business is plastics and for almost forty years it has been a leading producer of engineered plastic sheet, polymeric compounds and engineered products. This means taking in plastic as the raw material and adding value by creating sheets of all thicknesses, sizes and colours. This is sold on to companies that make items such as hot tubs, liners for RVs, wallpapers and food packaging. With a turnover of $1.5b Spartech has 42 sites with 3,497 employees all over the USA with one in France.
Spartech’s Vice President of Operational Excellence, Marc Roberts has created a page on the Spartech website posting all the Spartech sites’ ISO certifications posted. As well as demonstrating their commitment in depth to ISO this makes it easy for customers to check Spartech’s local certification and saves Marc time answering the same questions over and over. While Spartech acquired ISO 9001 25 years ago, ISO 14001 is a more recent evolution which has heightened the focus on environmental issues.
Marc says: “It’s a systematic way of institutionalising standards. It takes more energy and effort too.” 68% of sites already have ISO 140001 environmental certification. For Spartech the benefit of ISO is the discipline of applying known principles but it is also about realistically doing what customers’ expect. However much ISO evolves, Marc believes that ISO will remain the entry ticket to the marketplace.
One team in Louisiana lost their certificate because they failed to follow procedures. It was a wake up call to the company. The message went out that Spartech takes ISO seriously. As proof of this, Spartech employs twenty six internal staff constantly carrying out audits across all sites. The result is that costs have risen but the price is worth paying. Spartech chose IMSM as the more efficient and cost effective alternative to their previous supplier. Marc wants to give the relationship with IMSM a chance to settle down and will give it a year before delivering a verdict. Overall Marc believes: “It’s incumbent on us to be a great business for efficiency”.
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