Quality is a systematic part of the work process

Megatrex first received the ISO 9001 quality certification over a decade ago. What is the significance of the certification and what does it mean in practice? Samu Liimatainen, quality manager at Megatrex, explains this to us.

When talking with Samu Liimatainen, it becomes clear that staff at Megatrex take pride in their product and services. They are and have always been of high quality, regardless of the certification. Their consistently good customer feedback is also testimony to that. This does not reduce the importance of the certification.

“The fact that an independent third-party inspector found our operations to comply with a quality standard gives us confirmation and credibility. In that sense, the certification is important to us,” summarises Samu Liimatainen.

“In practice, the certification makes it easier to draft tenders, for example. There is no need to explain ourselves. It suffices to mention that we have the ISO 9001 quality certification.”

Megatrex has had the ISO 9001 for over ten years now, and Liimatainen contributed to its launching from the start. When they started to work on the quality system, the company used a consult, and more or less all salaried employees participated in the project. Obviously, the most demanding work was done in the beginning: reviewing all business operations from the quality perspective and creating quality criteria for the work step by step.

When the project began, they had no prior in-depth knowledge or experience of what is required to get a quality certification and how thoroughly the company’s operations must be analysed. As the certification programme is very comprehensive, and its extent is independent of company size, the process is relatively much more laborious for a small company.

The certification is maintained by annual third-party audits. Every three years, there is a more extensive audit that reviews all operations more thoroughly. Megatrex recently went through such large, two-day audit in the winter of 2025.

“Luckily, follow-up audits are much easier than those for the first application because we are already familiar with the procedure,” says Liimatainen. The staff also prepare very well for the audits.

Includes internal auditing

Obviously, maintaining the certified quality does not only include a review once per year: quality is visible in the daily activities and self-assessment at Megatrex.

“The standard requires regular internal auditing as well. Development ideas may also arise during project follow-up or from customer feedback.

In our weekly meeting for salaried employees, we review a wide range of matters related to production, sales and quality,” lists Liimatainen. Hence, the topic of quality is repeatedly present on many occasions.

In external as well as internal audits or other occasions, any emerged issues are addressed in detail, amending or correcting working practices. Does the auditing procedure change every year?

“There are always some complementary clarifications or additions but the content of the audit remains mostly the same. Newly, the ecological perspective and green values have been incorporated into the quality system,” says Liimatainen.

Quality systems streamline the work

“At the start, we may have tried to achieve goals that were too difficult and complicated, but the years have refined this quality system to perfectly match our work and our processes,” summarises Liimatainen.

In the beginning, the staff feared that employees would be individually rated for quality and that the system would mean extra work for them. Now they have seen that this is not the case. Maintaining quality is a natural part of the process and does not present itself as extra work but is, in a way, automated. In fact, standardised practices ease the work in many instances, such as ordering or approving subcontracted services.

According to Liimatainen, the biggest challenge is how to organise your own schedule when maintaining the quality certification beside your other work duties. Liimatainen’s other tasks consist mainly of product development and piloting, which in practice means performing test runs on customers’ products.

Maintaining Megatrex’s quality system does not lie solely on Liimatainen: his main collaborators are Heli Einola-Virtanen, who is in charge of maintenance services, and Miika Partanen in sales – and, to some extent, all salaried employees and management of the company.