On the road to ISO accreditation

CTPE Limited has seen its subcontract engineering business transform over the past few years, with higher demand from customers for increasingly complex parts and precision components manufactured in larger volumes

CTPE is on the road to acquiring ISO 9001 accreditation and has made some significant recent investments in order to achieve this target. Its manufacturing services now include 3, 4 and 5 axis machining and multi-pallet lights out production as part of a complete supply chain solution. The company has streamlined the administration of its entire production process by taking on a PSL Datatrack production control system.

Before PSL Datatrack was implemented all customer quotations and invoicing had been paper-based, but the need to modernise procedures to support the smooth running of the business was clear. “Quality is central to everything that we do. Once we decided to go for ISO 9001, it made perfect sense for PSL Datatrack to become part of our quality procedures in advance. We could have relied upon our paper-based administration system but knew PSL Datatrack would make us more efficient and would certainly help us to retain accreditation once we achieved it,” comments Alex Taylor, Operations Director at CTPE.

After a period of Zoom training and familiarisation, PSL Datatrack went live in 2021. “Each customer is created on the system with trading rules as well as contact details.” says Alex, “because the information and rules set here are then reused throughout the system. PSL Datatrack is intuitive so for example, now when we raise a works order all the details are automatically pulled through from the original quotation.The works order information is then carried across to the Deliveries module and so on.”

When it comes to acquiring and retaining ISO 9001, CTPE knows that the traceability that PSL Datatrack affords will make that process much slicker. It will also make repeat business much easier to manage by keeping records of every part manufactured with associated drawings stored alongside them.

“We have been running smoothly ever since implementing PSL Datatrack. It is an easy to use production control software system supported by good training and strong technical support,” concludes Alex.