When WILD was ISO9001 certified for the first time back in 1990, the company was considered a pioneer in quality management. Today, 30 years later, the auditors of Quality Austria were still impressed with the high level and clarity of our management processes in the course of the current ISO certification, even in times of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Quality does not mean dressing up in your best clothes for the audit. For many customers, we are a key partner in their success and, as a result, we are classified with registration authorities as a systemically important supplier who can expect unannounced audits on any given day”, explains Emmerich Kriegl, Head of Quality Management at WILD GmbH. For this reason, he and his team did not need any particular preparation for the surveillance audit recently carried out in connection with the ISO9001 and ISO13485 management standards. “True to our quality policy of being ‘the most trusted partner’ we live and breathe our processes, so we are ready for an audit on a daily basis.”

The summary of the Quality Austria auditors was accordingly positive: in their current audit report, they concluded that WILD GmbH and WILD Electronics maintained a culture of openness and great commitment. Moreover, they were delighted with the high level and clarity of the processes. “The fact that we did not lose any of these virtues during the coronavirus crisis left them quite impressed”, says Alfred Michalek, Head of Quality Management at WILD Electronics. “Quality is indeed being actively practised in our company and remains an integral part of it, even through times of crisis. Customers must be able to rely on us to deliver stable, flawless products – our quality management system is crucial in achieving that.” WILD has seen demand soar for many of its medical products in recent weeks and has still been able to maintain all its quality management requirements despite various coronavirus measures such as shift models. All audits and process approvals were swiftly moved to remote sessions and were completed according to the specifications. Meanwhile, the systems partner has been ISO9001 certified for the last 30 years and is thus holder of the oldest valid certificate of this kind in Austria. This year, too, the company passed the audit without any non-conformities.

“We continuously strive to improve our process landscape and we need the evaluations and recommendations of independent auditors to achieve this. This feedback is valuable to us and helps us exercise self-reflection and introduce the necessary improvements. We are currently working to establish standardised processes throughout the group and we try together to offer a ‘same fit to customer’ solution”, says Emmerich Kriegl. The US Food and Drug Administration also audited WILD to its full satisfaction in September 2019. “To achieve compliance with the strict good manufacturing practice (GMP) specifications, for instance, we recently validated and introduced a CAQ and QM-DMS system throughout the group.”