Berkeley County – NanoScreen designs, manufactures, sells and services precision liquid and plate handling products primarily in the pharmaceutical and genetic screening industries. Founded in 2003 and based in Hanahan, SC, the company employs 14 people across two locations. NanoScreen’s products enable faster results with fewer errors for their clients, supporting more experiments with accurate, consistent and repeatable data.
Situation
NanoScreen is dedicated to helping its customers fulfill their missions to cure disease and release humanity from pain. The official company mission is to “Create and deliver high value, innovative solutions for the Life Sciences.” With this mission and its customers in mind, NanoScreen’s management decided to improve internal operations by earning an ISO 9001:2008 certification. They turned to the South Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership (SCMEP) to assist with the planning and implementation of the necessary training and operational changes to achieve the certification.
Solution
To begin the process of ISO certification, SCMEP’s continuous improvement consultants met with the NanoScreen management team for an overview of the company’s current processes. Upon discussion and review of current operations, SCMEP developed a training plan to enable NanoScreen to obtain an ISO 9001:2008 certification rather quickly. The ISO training plan was implemented across all lines of business in a systematic fashion for optimal effectiveness.
Results
As a result of the implementation of ISO 9001:2008 training, NanoScreen passed Stages 1 and 2 audits and received the certification. Internal efficiency improved drastically. Customer satisfaction processes were changed for the better, and positive feedback has been received from current customers. All 14 employees were retained, and new customers are on the horizon as a result of the ISO certification.
“The overall experience with SCMEP was great,” said Tiffany Benford, Director of Quality Assurance. “The SCMEP team was eager to help, communicated effectively with us, and provided us with quality connections in relevant industries. I would highly recommend SCMEP to anyone in need of operations improvement and look forward to working with them on future projects.”
