THOMAS BOLTON Ltd

Thomas Bolton Ltd was established in 1719, transferring manufacture to Cheadle, Staffordshire in 1783. At the turn of the 19 century TBL employed over 3,000 people and was the major supplier of copper extrude to British Rail.

In 1994 TBL was one of the first companies in the UK to be accredited to the then new international quality standard ISO 9001:1994. Previously BS 5750, accreditation was a prerequisite of doing business with the electrical generation industry. Since the 1950’s servicing the power generation industry has been the mainstay of the business. The quality system had been revised many times over the years, in-line with revisions of the quality standard and customers requirements..

As a result of restructuring we now have less than 150 people at the Froghall site performing only minimum operations. The quality system however, remained largely unchanged. It was agreed to be cumbersome and inappropriate to our current needs. This monster of a system incurred unnecessary cost and labour requirements to operate it. NW&A reduced the quality manual from 324 pages, which included 208 operating procedures and 136 work instructions, to a 46-page document consisting of process flow charts. This has resulted in a
corresponding reduction in bureaucracy and the inherent cost saving. No issues of compliance with the standard have been identified by the Lloyds Register of Shipping during any of their subsequent audits and we continue to do business with all powder generation customers in the UK, Europe and North America.

Jean-Michel Saint-Etienne CEO.