BRIGHTSMITH Coater’s post-painting operation, located in Trenton, NJ, was recently certified to the ISO 9001:2015 quality system standard. This certification assists BRIGHTSMITH Coaters with maintaining industry leadership; utilizing a customer focus and quality improvements that are consistent with continued growth, enhanced customer service, and employee satisfaction; harnessing growth responsibly.

By conforming to the ISO standard, BRIGHTSMITH provides their customers with confidence in knowing that an established systematic approach to total quality management is employed. BRIGHTSMITH is continuously improving their processes to ensure their customers’ needs are clearly understood and fulfilled.    

The scope of BRIGHTSMITH Trenton’s certification is post-painting and powder coating of extruded and/or fabricated metal parts. The post-painting services are ideal for applications such as roof coping, railings, storefront, facades, doors, panels, wheels, assorted brake shapes, architectural extrusions, and more. All products go through an in-house pre-treatment stage to ensure a high-quality finish. 

BRIGHTSMITH’s coil coating facility in Morrisville, PA has been ISO Certified since June 2006. Their scope of certification is applicable to prepainting, slitting, laminating, and embossing of coiled sheet metals.

BRIGHTSMITH chose SRI Quality System Registrar as their partner to assist in the renewal of the ISO certification for their coil coating facility, and for the new ISO certification for their post-painting facility. Established in 1991 as Steel Related Industries Quality System Registrar (SRI) to serve suppliers in the steel industry, SRI was one of the first five registrars in the U.S. As a representative on ISO 9000 and 14001 Technical Advisory Groups, a member and past Chair of the Independent Association of Accredited Registrars (IAAR), a representative of the IAAR on the International Automotive Sector Group (IASG), and former Malcolm Baldrige Senior Examiner, founder and CEO Dr. Peter B. Lake put SRI at the forefront of development and acceptance of standards worldwide. SRI now serves the accreditation needs of businesses in over 40 major industries across North America, Asia, and Europe.

The ISO 9001 series of certifications is based on seven quality management principles, including: customer focus, leadership, engagement of people, process approach, improvement, evidence-based decision making, and relationship management. The 2015 version of ISO 9001 is less prescriptive than its predecessors and focuses on performance. This is achieved by combining the process approach with risk-based thinking and employing the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle at all levels in the organization. Greater emphasis on building a management system suited to each organization's needs is applied. 

Karen Schwenk, Quality Management Systems Administrator, said, “We are very proud to now have ISO certification for both BRIGHTSMITH facilities.  The BRIGHTSMITH team meets regularly to review our progress toward continuous improvement. Everyone is involved and accountable to aligning our quality services to our business strategy for growth. This commitment to certification and excellence ensures that we will continue to deliver the highest quality of services to all of our stakeholders.”