Belden gains IRIS certification for Hirschmann™ brand

Tuesday, Mar 16, 2010

Belden has announced that following an audit performed by TÜV Management Service, its complete range of Hirschmann™ industrial Ethernet and automation products has been certified according to the requirements of the International Railway Industry Standard (IRIS). Like the ISO/TS 16949 standard for suppliers to the automobile industry, IRIS is a new organisation standard for the rail-mounted vehicle industry, which assumes project durations of 20 to 30 years.

The certificate covers the scopes of certification 9 (On board vehicle control), 10 (Passenger information system), 11 (Communication systems), 20 (Single railway components).

Belden’s Hirschmann™ facility was first certified according to ISO 9001 in 1994. The IRIS audit took place during 2009. Contrary to normal practice during an ISO 9001 audit, the IRIS audit looks at more than just conformity. Accordingly, the company was assessed against IRIS criteria, which will allow focused and measurable improvements in the future.

At product level, the main focus of the IRIS certification is on reliability, availability of the application and maintainability in service. Assessment of safety in conjunction with the product application is a further important area. The scope of IRIS is significantly more far-reaching than the ISO 9001 standard in terms of the strong level of customer involvement during the entire project duration, from the enquiry processing stage, during project management in the development phase and configuration management in production, right up to installation and after-sales service.

Although the IRIS standard specifically focuses on the requirements of the rail-mounted vehicle industry, all Hirschmann™ customers will benefit. Peter Schumacher, Director Quality Management says: “Fierce competition and growing customer expectations have driven increasingly demanding product quality requirements. In addition to these demands, more profound partnership with customers has also led to stronger integration of customer-specific needs in our business and communication processes. This certification clearly demonstrates that the desire to establish partnerships with our customers is strongly integrated in our business processes.”

Source: EMG