Dale Dental has announced that the company has obtained its ISO 9001:2000 certification, thus making it the first U.S. outsourcing laboratory for copings and bridges frameworks to receive this level of process certification.
The ISO (International Organizations for Standardization) standard is currently in use in 152 countries around the world and has become an international reference for quality management requirements.
The 9001:2000 program is the most current and addresses what an organization does to satisfy customer requirements, customer satisfaction, regulatory requirements and ongoing improvement in all of these areas.
"We decided to become ISO 9001:2000 certified because it provides our customers with the assurance and added level of confidence that they can fabricate their restorations on high-quality copings and bridge frameworks manufactured to a set of stringent, globally-accepted standards," said David Lesh, president and founder of Dale Dental. "We now have a unique advantage to ensure that our processes and procedures meet the highest standards in quality management."
"We believe this should provide our dental laboratory customers and the dentists they serve with the confidence that the restorations they receive from us have been manufactured in accordance with the process set by the material manufacturer and should perform to that manufacturer's specifications for strength and reliability," Lesh added.
To achieve ISO 9001:2000 certification, Dale Dental underwent a six-month implementation process that entailed review and analysis of processes and development of procedures within every department in the organization. Enhancements were made to the company's:
* Stated quality objectives to achieve on-time manufacturing and deliveries in excess of 99 percent.
* Review process of customer feedback which is reviewed by a management team who use the data to put new systems and processes in place to increase customer satisfaction.
* Production processes that expedite and better define customer delivery expectations and assure process accountability.
Additionally, as a result of this analysis, Dale Dental now fully documents any internal and supplier nonconformance and works to ensure root cause analysis of issues that will prevent reoccurrence and provide management with comprehensive statistical information of overall efficiencies.
"The addition of these new controls and processes allows Dale Dental to provide a consistently higher quality product with even more impressive on-time delivery to our customers," said Lesh. "Becoming ISO certified is a prestigious accomplishment and we are extremely proud to associate the dental industry with this globally recognized, high level of process certification."
