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Sealite USA Gets a Jump on ISO Certification to Stay Ahead of the Curve

About

Sealite USA began its journey as Watermark Navigation Systems located in Gilford, New Hampshire. At the time Watermark was distributing marine lanterns and buoys for Sealite Australia. Then in 2011 Sealite Australia purchased the distribution portion of Watermark’s business and Sealite USA was born. That is also when they began manufacturing marine lanterns and buoys at the Gilford location. Needing more space Sealite USA moved into a 20,000 square foot facility in Tilton, New Hampshire in 2013.

Sealite now has 30 employees. They manufacture their product lines of buoys and lights to aid to marine navigation to insure safe passage of ships through marked channels, as well as their Avlite division manufacturing airfield lighting systems for military, government and state/municipal and consumer markets.

The Challenge

“In January of 2018 we had the opportunity to expand our product line by acquiring Laser Guidance, Inc. out of Seattle, Washington,” said Tara Stewart, President of Sealite USA. “With that acquisition we knew fairly quickly we needed ISO certification. Especially because the FAA prefers manufacturers who are ISO certified,” said Stewart. She also knew it would make Sealite a better company overall. A Sealite employee attending a New Hampshire Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NH MEP), a NIST MEP affiliate, workshop found out about NH MEP's ISO certification capabities and, in March 2018, Sealite decided to utilize NH MEP for On-Site ISO 9001:2015 implementation training.

Our company has changed with the help of NHMEP, initially we sent employees to their training sessions. Our employees found the training very beneficial and implemented their learnings quickly. We then contracted with an NHMEP for a quality consultant to lead us through ISO certification. As a follow-on, we contracted the quality consultant for an additional 12 months for continued quality support and training. We have also used NHMEP for two lean events both very successful. NHMEP provides high quality support in a very professional and timely manner.

— Tara Stewart, President

MEP's Role

NH MEP provided training and coaching to Sealite to comply with the ISO 9001:2015 standard. Existing quality system documentation was used where possible in the training for creation of the new system. Once the documentation was created Sealite employees were trained in implementing the system towards registration to ISO 9001:2015. This work was conducted both on-site and off-site as necessary. The final piece was ISO 9001:2015 Internal Auditor Training for some employees. In June of 2019 Sealite received ISO 9001:2015 certification
Created June 2, 2020, Updated July 12, 2021