Mitsui Auto Steel is a sole source supplier of steel to Toyota in Canada, with annual sales of approximately $180 million. They provide outsourced purchasing, warehousing, transportation, quality control and distribution functions relating to the supply of steel coils to Toyota Canada. MASCI is currently undergoing a major expansion, which will also include manufacturing.
SatiStar developed and implemented a QS-9000 and ISO 9001 quality system for MASCI, including documenting the quality system. Mitsui’s personnel were trained in internal auditing and continuous improvement. Future internal auditing has been outsourced to SatiStar, and an on-going contract has been obtained to expand Mitsui’s quality system to include their larger facility, and to upgrade their existing registration to manufacturing status. Achievements included:

• Successfully obtained QS9000 and ISO9001 registration on the first attempt and recommended immediately for registration
• External audit was extremely brief with only a few trivial findings, all of which were corrected during the course of the audit

The project was demanding because the primary working language for MASCI employees is Japanese. In addition, the company is operated very efficiently, employing an extremely limited number of Mitsui personnel. Consequently, the availability to Mitsui’s personnel throughout the project was very limited. The project was further complicated through a 2 month delay caused by illness to the management representative. Nevertheless, the entire project was completed within 8 months—two weeks ahead of schedule!