The ISO 9001 is a quality management standard that lists requirements that help improve the quality of our products and services by mitigating risks and streamlining processes.
After passing a successful external audit in April 2024, DeltaQuad is now ISO 9001:2015 certified! Whereas in other sectors, being ISO-9001 certified is kind of a given, the UAV sector is relatively new, which means few companies are certified yet. With our ambition to remain market leader in our sector, quality is one of our pillars. This is why last September we started the road towards ISO 9001 certification of our quality management system.
Our focus on delivering quality is not the only benefit of meeting ISO 9001 requirements. As a fast-growing company, the need to professionalize becomes more and more apparent. The ISO 9001 provides a good framework for doing this, by setting requirements for risk management, structuring processes, documenting information, ensuring traceability, and increasing efficiency. Documenting all processes allowed us to analyze and resolve roadblocks in the Sales, Finance and Operations processes, increasing efficiency, by preventing unnecessary delays. It also gave the impulse to straighten out and document responsibilities per position, which helped clarify processes and line of command.
In addition to these improvements, ISO 9001 as a globally recognized certification, already means something to customers, and customers either know or can find out easily what this certification entails and how it adds value in other parts of the company.
Overall, the cycle of continuous improvement and focus on the customer that is inherent to the ISO 9001 fits well with our innovative character. It ties into our mission to shape the future of aerial intelligence with unmatched innovation and strategic resilience. Customer centricity is also inherent to our vision, which is to create versatile UAVs that excel in the toughest environments, delivering unmatched capabilities. This is something we cannot achieve without a well-functioning customer feedback system. For example, by choosing to release the DeltaQuad Evo already in beta, we can gather valuable customer feedback leading to innovations that helped improve the product and services around it.
With regards to our staff - the DeltaSquad - ISO 9001 advocates for continuous learning, by identifying staff development needs and providing opportunities for improvement. Investing in people ties into our core value ‘the DeltaQuad family’. Showing loyalty to employees is one example of the family values we bring into the workplace. We want to offer our staff a place to grow, develop skills, and above all, a place to safely make mistakes and learn from them. We’re hoping ISO 9001 can be a vehicle to further boost employee morale and engagement.
All in all, these examples sound promising, but we realize getting certified only provides a basis for successful quality management. We look forward to further improving, using the ISO standard as a starting point. The only way is up!