Quality Program: ISO 9002:94 Registration

It is as easy and no more expensive to do something right as it is to do the same thing wrong. The same is true of motor vehicle license plates...it takes the same time and, costs the same in raw materials to make a great plate as it would to make a poor one. Every customer and manufacturer knows that. What is vital in a license plate facility, is a system which ensures every plate is manufactured to that same high standard.

How can a customer assure themselves that a manufacturer has such a system?

ISO 9000 is the Internationally recognized authority on which any customers can rely that a manufacturer has a comprehensive system in place to guarantee consistent quality of finished product.

Waldale is one of only three manufacturers world wide who has qualified for ISO 9000 registration for the production of license plates, and the only North American manufacturer to be registered.

Waldale's Plant Manager, Mr. Michel Gosselin, is a Master Tool and Die Maker. As Plant Manager, Mr. Gosselin is ultimately responsible for the quality of our finished plates. We believe that placing quality in the hands of someone who works in tolerances of 0.00050" (0.0127 mm) and who supervised the construction of the dies used, is placing Quality in the best possible hands. In fact, plant management has always been in the hands of our senior Tool and Die makers since Waldale started business (Mr. Rudi Kissener - 1949 - 1952 , Mr. Rene DeLong 1952 - 1995 , Michel Gosselin 1995 to present).

The repetitive nature of license plate production cries out for some form of automation. However, to the best of our knowledge Waldale employs North America's only fully automated, computer controlled manufacturing system. Waldale is very proud that this system was designed, engineered and constructed "in house" by Waldale's Engineering and Tool & Die staff. This system is so accurate and produces such fine product that a customer wrote in a letter May 21, 1999 that they had identified only two (2) plates which fell below standards, from an order of 2 million (2,000,000) plates.

We identified the cause for these two returned plate and instituted a corrective action but, we are as astounded as our customer with a final product reject rate (experienced in this instance) of 0.005%.

What does I.S.O. 9002:94 registration mean to our customers?

Lot Traceability

We have one hundred percent lot traceability within our plant. This means that for each license plate that we produce, we can trace and identify the aluminum coil that was used, the roll of reflective sheeting that was used, and the can of ink that was used to manufacture that particular license plate. This ensures that were there ever a problem with a raw material, such as a lot number of sheeting, that we could identify each and every license plate that was produced using that lot of reflective sheeting, as each license plate carries its own unique number. Fortunately we have never had to use our lot traceability for such an issue.

Quality Control

Our quality control is the tightest in the license plate industry. One hundred percent of our product is checked to ensure that it meets our rigorous requirements even though the toughest client specification demand that only one in five hundred is checked. Anyone on our production line has the right, indeed the responsibility to reject any product at the earliest possible phase of fabrication should they feel it appropriate. This attention to detail is the hallmark of Waldale and much appreciated by our customers.