ISO - A three letter word a description of Holcim (US) Inc.´s Devil´s Slide Utah Plant road to ISO certification

Overheard on many a plant working floor is the grousing and grumbling concerning another directive from upper management to utilize a new and wonderful management tool or this new organizational structure, or that type of meeting format, or this different guideline to improve business growth potential. Not long ago a new buzz word with the initials of I-S-O started making the rounds through our management and would soon be directed to the employees on the working floor. Implementing the ISO principles contained in the environmental and quality standards meant to some another mandate to take up our time, an increase in spending in an already tight budget dollar, and in the end, becoming as useful as an extinct dinosaur. That sometimes seems to be the way things start, but this story has a different ending. This story has a \´page two\´ and happily-ever-after ending. Through periods of orientation, intense training, immersion into a new process, learning a system from the bottom up, taking ownership, and then operating with a philosophy, "if you can\´t beat em, join em", we took charge of our managerial commitment and worked hard to make ISO implementation a success and not the dinosaur it could have become. By applying the ISO principles of planning, doing, checking, and acting as our directives, we were able to take the valuable pieces of our current business platforms and applications, remodel them, update them and install them into a working, living group of documents and call it a successful ISO implementation program. In short, becoming ISO compliant is to organize your management systems, inform your customers, invite your stakeholders to participate in your design, plan, do, check, and act on what you intend to do with your business and have an outside party see if you are as good as your word. In other words, as the old saying goes we were willing to "put our money where our mouth was", and hopefully see our success grow. The following is brief description ho- - w the Devil\´s Slide facility accomplished ISO certification over the past three years and made it a way of life