Neat and tidy at Ragn-Sells with Omnia

Recycling company Ragn-Sells runs a strictly controlled operation, in which environmental concerns, production quality, and a safe working environment are critical to the company’s success. To ensure processes are always in line with its ISO certifications and that work on improvements is constantly ongoing, Ragn-sells uses an Omnia-based Document and Quality Management System.

“The implementation of Omnia and its support for controlled documents has significantly improved our quality management processes as well as the structure and ownership of our templates and documents. Keeping steering documents and processes constantly updated and synchronized with our certification standards is so much easier with the new system”, says Carina Ahlroos, Quality Manager at Ragn-Sells.

Structure and ownership are key to success

For more than 80 years Ragn-Sells have collected, processed, cleaned and recycled waste. The company has more than 2500 employees and runs operations throughout Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Estonia. A role model in the recycling industry, Ragn-Sells have demonstrated through their actions and financial results that the mission of taking better care of Mother Earth can very well be combined with a healthy balance sheet. Ever since the company was founded, Ragn-Sells has developed highly efficient solutions designed to minimize environmental impact and transform waste into valuable resources.

As Ragn-Sells strive to continuously improve the return on recycled waste and reduce negative environmental effects, its work on occupational health and safety, quality and environmental processes are of critical importance. To support this work, the company uses a Quality Management System based on Omnia, a product running on SharePoint that has the capacity and features to manage and control documents throughout their lifecycle.

“When implementing Omnia, we saw an opportunity for a total remake of the entire Quality Management System, thereby improving and streamlining our document structure. We initiated a thorough cleanup of our folders, deleting duplicates, redundant or incomplete documents, creating new document types and templates, and republishing every document with a clearly specified owner”, Carina explains.

Authors’ forum drives improvements

A total of approximately 20 authors/owners have so far been allocated to the processes and published documents, but many documents are yet to be published. A document is in fact only published when it has an owner. Carina clarifies:

“We are convinced that having an owner assigned to each document is a decisive success factor. Ownership ensures that the document is constantly kept consistent with our certification standards and process changes. That’s why we only publish documents with approved owners in the system.”

Others in the process of creating or upgrading a Quality Management System should, according to Carina, have a carefully planned and approved structure for documents and user roles before implementing the system. This will facilitate the implementation process enormously.

Carina has also established a dedicated team of authors that regularly meets to discuss and decide on changes in the document structure, work processes and the system’s functionality.

“It’s been a very complex and time-consuming project. The author’s forum has been a cornerstone in our work of creating a more efficient and transparent document structure. In the forum, we share insights and make sure that processes, functions, and documents are constantly improved”, Carina points out.

Improved management and control

Ragn-Sells is certified in accordance with the following ISO standards for occupational health and safety, quality and environment: 45001:2018, 9001:2015 and 14001:2015. The Quality Management System is structured on the basis of core, steering and support processes and covers the entire Swedish operation from collection and service to marketing and sales.

The processes are visualized by clickable images that redirect the user to sub-pages containing the different process categories. On these pages, the documents for each sub-process are listed.

“It’s very easy to get an overview of all the processes and to locate the right document. You can either click on the linked process images or initiate a free text search. Our ability to control, review and update processes and documents has improved enormously. This has resulted in greater efficiency and accuracy in our quality management and standards compliance work”, Carina concludes and adds:

“Since we now create and update every process-linked document from within the system, we’ll always get the correct template, document type, and structure. You’re simply forced by the system’s mandatory routines to do everything by the book. It’s now all very neat and tidy.”