In the past, while expecting its suppliers to meet ISO 9001 certification standards, ARN did not meet them itself, concedes Marco van de Goor, Finance & Control manager at ARN. “So a few years ago, the management team decided that the best way to guarantee our quality was to test both our operational and financial processes.”
In 2021 and 2022, ARN worked hard to set up and roll out a quality-management system system that would map out the risks and opportunities of its operational processes, so that they could be more easily monitored and, where necessary, tweaked. Take, for example, the calculation of the recycling performance and the registration of complaints. This quality-management system was assessed by an ISO audit organisation and ARN received ISO 9001 certification at the beginning of 2023. “The ISO 9001 standard will now help us to maintain the high level of quality that we deliver with our chain partners,” assures Van de Goor
The ISO 9001 certification
The certification covers:
- implementing the product responsibility of the importers of cars registered in the Netherlands, as well as car batteries, by means of a national intake and processing system; • sustaining and maintaining a nationwide network of car-dismantling companies;
- sustaining and maintaining a nationwide network of car-dismantling companies;
- contracting collection and processing companies for the removal of waste materials from end-of-life vehicles;
- monitoring end-of-life vehicles and the waste materials taken from them throughout the recycling chain;
- collecting the recycling fee for cars and the management fee for car batteries in the Netherlands;
- the relevant reporting to the Netherlands’ Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management.