Industrial processing model for natural fibre composites to meet ISO 9001:2000 standards

Composite materials, plastics and ceramics have been the dominant emerging materials. The volume and number of applications of composite materials have grown steadily, penetrating and conquering new markets. Composite materials constitute a significant proportion of the emerging materials with the market ranging from everyday products to sophisticated applications. While composites have already proven their worth as weight saving materials, the current challenge is to make final product to have good austhetics and affordable. The efforts to produce economically attractive and quality composite components have resulted in several innovative manufacturing techniques. This paper seeks to address that there be an integrated approach in design, material selection, processing, tooling, quality assurance, manufacturing, programme management and control for composites to be competitive with other engineering materials. With this background, this paper seeks to examine and analyse the manufacturing processes and endeavour to identify how to manage numerous linked activities through the process approach based on the ISO 9001:2000 – Quality Management Systems (QMS) guidelines and procedures.