Verner Wheelock, one of the UK’s foremost food industry training companies, has achieved ISO 9001:2015 accreditation. The company, which was founded in 1990, trains hundreds of delegates every year in HACCP, Food Safety, Auditing and specialist courses such as Root Cause Analysis, as well as performing SMETA ethical audits.
ISO 9001 logical next step
The decision to work towards the ISO quality management system standard was driven by the growth of the company over the past few years. Managing Director, Alison Wheelock, said, “We have experienced a dramatic growth in the number of both open and in-house courses in recent years and consequently in the number of people trained. Achieving ISO 9001 seemed like a logical next step.
We wanted to make sure that, even at maximum capacity, we were still able to guarantee the high standard of service and professionalism that our customers have come to expect. With increased numbers of delegates, courses and trainers, the systems introduced have helped us to have greater consistency in course materials. It’s also proving beneficial for efficiency in course material updates and document control, acting on feedback and formalising systems.”
Wheelock says that the accreditation will make it easier to do business with larger customers especially in terms of their growing Ethical Audit work.
A commitment to excellent customer service
Mitch Morrison, Verner Wheelock’s Administration Controller was responsible for managing the project over a 12 month period in collaboration with Global QA Consultants said, “We’ve always had an attention to detail and a commitment to providing excellent customer service. Working towards ISO 9001 has helped us to streamline processes and formalise our current practices. As anyone who’s embarked on this journey will know, it’s a long and intensive one, but being approved by LRQA to ISO 9001:2015 has definitely been worthwhile in the end.”