By Lionel Moss, ES Foundry
There’s a lot happening at ES Foundry. We recently completed the expansion of our Greenwood facility to 3 GW of annual solar cell manufacturing capacity, dramatically increasing the scale of our U.S. manufacturing operations.
At the same time, teams across the company were tackling another major milestone: demonstrating that the systems behind our growing operation are every bit as strong as the manufacturing capacity we are building.
ES Foundry has officially achieved:
- ISO 9001:2015 for Quality Management Systems
- ISO 14001:2015 for Environmental Management Systems
- ISO 45001:2018 for Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems
And we achieved all three through a comprehensive Integrated Management System audit conducted during one of the fastest periods of growth in our company’s history.
More Than Certifications on the Wall
Independent auditors looked closely at how we actually operate — from manufacturing and testing to procurement, material handling, quality assurance, environmental management and employee health and safety — and found our operations to be best in class
They evaluated whether our processes were defined, whether they were being followed and, most importantly, whether we had systems in place to identify problems, manage risk and continuously improve.
The audit highlighted several strengths in how ES Foundry manages performance, risk and continuous improvement across its operations. This includes tracking 14 objectives tied to quality, environmental performance and safety; using 8D root-cause analysis to address issues and prevent recurrence; and maintaining detailed emergency preparedness procedures for situations ranging from severe weather to chemical spills.
And we are building that expertise from within. Twelve ES Foundry employees across Quality, Engineering and Operations have now completed the internal auditor qualification process, strengthening our ability to continuously evaluate and improve how we work.
After all, a strong manufacturing system belongs to all of us.
Scaling the Right Way
Reaching 3 GW is an important accomplishment for ES Foundry. But adding equipment and capacity is only one part of building a world-class U.S. manufacturing operation.
We also have to be able to perform safely, consistently and reliably as we grow.
As CEO Alex Zhu put it: “Scaling domestic manufacturing requires more than adding capacity. It requires the systems, accountability and discipline to perform consistently at that scale. Achieving all three certifications with zero nonconformities while expanding our manufacturing operations is an important milestone for our team and a strong validation of the operational foundation we are building.”
That foundation is what allows ES Foundry to continue growing while maintaining the quality and reliability our customers expect.
The Work Continues
We are celebrating this achievement and our team’s hard and deliberate work to get here, but we don’t view these certifications as the finish line.
The real value of these standards comes from what happens next: applying them every day on the manufacturing floor and throughout the organization. That means strengthening operational discipline, expanding standardized 5S workplace practices and using automation and cloud-based tools to integrate quality, environmental and safety requirements more seamlessly into our daily workflows.
Most importantly, it means continuing to look for ways to make our operations safer, processes stronger and products more consistent.
A Milestone Worth Celebrating
Earning all three certifications with zero major or minor nonconformities, while scaling the Greenwood facility to 3 GW, reflects a tremendous amount of work across ES Foundry — much of it happening behind the scenes — to build a manufacturing organization designed to perform for the long term.
Congratulations and thank you to everyone across Quality, Engineering, Operations and the broader ES Foundry team who helped make this milestone possible!