To prevent growing pains, one Illinois bank is taking a cue from the manufacturing industry.
American Chartered Bank in Schaumburg began training in November for ISO9001 certification, a quality-control designation coveted by many manufacturers.
If $750 million-asset American Chartered earns certification, it would be the first bank to implement the ISO9001 system, which was designed by the International Standards Organization in 1987 to facilitate international business by standardizing processes and specifications.
Standards may dictate, say, the distance between the threads on a screw or the dimensions of credit cards so that they can be used with machines all over the world. Maytag Corp. and Ford Motor Co. are two companies that have received certification, said Joel R. Pecoraro, an ISO9001 instructor for DePaul University.
Revisions to the standards were made in 1994 and in 2000 to include management and service standards, so companies outside manufacturing, such as American Chartered, can now apply for the certification.
American Chartered will undergo a rigorous six- to eight-month review in which the bank and its ISO9001 consultant, DePaul, will establish guidelines in such areas as customer service and employee satisfaction.
Once certified, the bank will agree to undergo audits of two to three days every six months to make sure it is meeting the standards it set for itself. A third-party registrar hired by DePaul will conduct the audits.
"It really picks up where [Total Quality Management] leaves off," said Daniel A. Sloan, DePaul's program sales executive for continuing and professional education.
Ronald R. Hunt, the senior vice president for consumer banking and operations at American Chartered, said the bank wanted to adopt a quality-control system to better monitor its performance as it continues to grow.
The bank's assets have increased 65% since 1998, and though it has not felt any ill effects from the quick growth, "at some point your organization can be under stress, and all of a sudden the things that made you successful aren't happening anymore," Mr. Hunt said. "The same tenets of quality are applicable in the service industry as the manufacturing industry."
