Fredericia Shipping A/S is located at the hub of eastbound/westbound and northbound/southbound traffic in Denmark - to be more precise, in Fredericia.
The company specialises in combined sea and overland transport and warehousing systems, and its life and soul is the progress the port of Fredericia has made since the middle of the eighties towards being one of the major bulk goods ports. The company was established in 1973 and has almost 100 employees.
Bulk terminal operators are subject to the quality assurance requirements set by The Danish Maritime Authority. Based on an EU decision the Danish Maritime Authority requires operators of bulk terminals to be certified in accordance with ISO 9000 before 5 February 2006.
As a result, Fredericia Shipping A/S’s challenge has been to set up a quality assurance system tailored to the needs of the company and while paying due regard to the requirements of the Danish Maritime Authority.
The ISO 9001 system
Fredericia Shipping A/S had already established an ISO 9001 system in accordance with the old standards. This system has been adapted so that it now complies with the Danish Maritime Authority's requirements in Technical Regulation No. 6.
The regulation deals with procedures relative to the obligations of terminal representatives, including reporting to the Danish Maritime Authority, procedures concerning communications between ship and terminal and the establishment of loading and unloading plans with appurtenant instructions for how plans should be changed and approved.
Certification
The company obtained certification of their quality management system in the spring of 2005. The certifyer was FORCE Technology’s independent certifying body FORCE-Dantest CERT.
Managing Director Klaus G. Andersen is delighted to have certification in order and that the actual certification process went so smoothly. “We now have to do further work on the system and optimise it to achieve improvements in the company," he adds.
The reason we chose FORCE-Dantest CERT as the certifying body was that we had participated in a theme day in the autumn of 2004 at this company, and they convinced us that they could carry out the task in a way that would bring us added value for our costs.”
Perspectives
Christoffer Susé, Chief of Secretariat with Danish Associated Ports, says of certification: “For Associated Danish Ports it has been important that the task of certifying our quality management system for bulk terminal operators was carried out in a pragmatic and convenient manner in the context of the new statutory requirements.”
Thus the main task was to identify the statutory requirements, compare these to actual bulk operations being performed and based on this implement ISO 9001 certification.
And as there are only a limited number of companies subject to the new regulations it was important to gather expertise in one place in order to benefit from experience and knowledge, and, very importantly, to minimise costs.
“Today we have a system which is both functional and financially profitable, which was the whole idea when we embarked on the project,” Christoffer Susé says in conclusion.
