The founder of SHEQ and Beyond, Mike Morrison, has forty- five years’ experience in Quality, Environmental and Health and Safety management.
He started in physical quality control, while qualifying part time for a National Diploma in Analytical Chemistry, in 1972.
His career has led him into quality systems, working closely with production rather than purely laboratory work.
The milestones of his working life were:
- Three years working as a production supervisor in the pharmaceutical industry and later making adhesives, so he understands the pressures of production from personal experience.
- First Quality System for SABAX. This quality system was the old SABS 1057, a forerunner of ISO 9001 in South Africa. SABAX was the first South African pharmaceutical company to list to an external quality system. (Of course, all pharmaceutical companies have internal quality systems)
- Mike started SABAX’s Quality Engineering department and became their Quality Engineering Manager. Quality Engineering is a statistically based improvement discipline, which today is sold as “Six Sigma” among other quality systems. This discipline again led to working closely with production to improve efficiency.
- Qualified as a Quality Engineer, certificated by the American Quality Control Society.
- Qualified for a Higher National Diploma in Quality Assurance.
- Joined Chemserve Metal Sciences in 1988 as their Quality Manager.
- Rescued Chemserve Metal Sciences ISO 9001 Quality listing, which was on the verge of de-listing.
- Managed Health and Safety to the NOSA standard while at Chemserve Metal Sciences.
- Joined Harvey Roofing Products in 2001. He was employed to rescue ISO 9001. They also tasked him with installing ISO14001, the international Environmental standard. He accomplished both these tasks in the first eighteen months of employment with Harvey Roofing Products. He then managed these systems.
Mike was involved in Health and Safety and served on the Health and Safety and Environmental committee of Murry and Roberts, when Murry and Roberts owned Harvey Roofing Products.
Mike has been involved in training and development throughout his career.
The development of black staff started in the mid 1980’s and the Quality Department was the “Guinea pig” department, so Mike was responsible for this development.
He developed training programs on various subjects. The training program for Statistical Process Control was his favourite. He developed this to run in three two-hour modules. The first module was an introduction to statistics and the plotting and interpreting of Statistical Control Charts using the Three Standard Deviation limits. The second module taught students to use the one and two Standard Deviation limits to refine their decision making.
These two modules are aimed at production operators, production supervisors and Quality technicians. The pass mark for these modules is seventy percent.
The third module was how to calculate standard deviations and set up the charts. This module is aimed at managers and development chemists.
One of Mike’s fondest memories was training a production operator, who was considered by his manager to be a solid worker, but a bit dim, to plot and use control charts. Mike has the animation on the worker’s face, when he worker grasped the concept, etched in his memory.
Mike has spent the last three years consulting for Synergy Chemicals, preparing them for an ISO 9001 assessment, and mentoring graduate engineers for Engineers for Africa.
Mike is married to Barbara, going on forty six years, and he has a son, daughter in law and three grandchildren in London, and a daughter and son in law in Johannesburg.
Two years ago, while visiting the family in London, Mike acted as a consultant to St Georges University of London’s internal legal department when his son, who is the university’s in house lawyer, was tasked with implementing the England and Wales’ Law Society’s Lexcel (excellence in legal practice management and client care) quality system. St George’s Lexcel quality system was approved, after clearing minor findings, after the first assessment.
Mike is a Christian serving at Connexions Church, in Benoni, as a Children’s Church Teacher. He has taught Children’s Church, off and on for forty years.
