OIKEN Success Story

Who are you and what does OIKEN do?

My name is Julien Fardel and I am currently in charge of safety and environment for Oiken. Oiken is a DSO, a distribution network operator that manages multiple energy sources. We have electricity, heating, multimedia and water networks as well as everything related to outdoor lighting. Oiken is a company with 550 employees, 100 of whom work for seven Oiken daughter companies that cover a wide range of activities.

What challenges were you facing before implementing BPAQuality365®?

Oiken is the result of the merger in 2019 of Energie Sion Région and Sierre Energie, which means that since then we’ve put a lot of things in place, processes and procedures that we’ve grown all at once, and the challenge was to be able to pass on the documentation in the right version to everyone at the right time.

Why did you choose to go for BPA Solutions?

We chose BPA because we looked at what different tools were available and we needed a platform that suited our environment, our way of working, our existing tools. Our requirements were risk management, management of documents, and then everything to do with monitoring non-conformities and improvement measures. After analyzing all the tools we had already available, we realized that the QM tool we had before was no longer suitable. The people in charge were abandoning this previous QM tool and, unfortunately, it was no longer monitored or kept up to date. So that’s also one of the reasons why we changed our tool, to get something that’s more compatible with our way of working and our environment.

Which solution and module have you implemented?

We went for BPAQuality365 with everything related to Audit Management as well as Document Management. We also implemented the Non-Conformance Management module and the Power Apps for monitoring audits and non-conformances.

Which result were you able to achieve with the BPA’s software?

One of our objectives is to obtain by the end of this year the ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and Valais Excellence which is a regional certification . This eQMS will enable us to track all our documentation, to provide all the risk management information, and to provide all the data needed to monitor non-conformities and improvement measures within the company. We’ll see in the future when we have the first audits, but it’s true that for the internal audits we’ve set up, this solution improves visibility and gives us the possibility of having a calendar with the various audits planned. This eQMS provides an effective quality structure and a centralized repository of information, enabling the implementation of a process centric approach as part of a continuous improvement strategy.