Charles E. Serafini - My Background

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I was born in the town of Falkirk in Central Scotland in 1949. I attended Comely Park Primary School and then Falkirk High School where I eventually gained a few "Highers" although I think the majority of my efforts just went into having a good time as with many others of us who were teenagers in the sixties.

When I eventually decided to leave school and try to earn a living I first of all served a Mechanical Engineering Apprenticeship with the then British Steel Corporation [now British Steel plc.] from 1968 to 1972 while at the same time gaining Ordinary and Higher National Certificates in Mechanical Engineering.

Between 1972 and 1974 I gained a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Strathclyde in Scotland after which I rejoined the British Steel Corporation, first as a trainee and then as a Mechanical Planning Engineer at the Gartcosh Cold Mill in Central Scotland. This mill produced cold rolled steel strip, primarily for the automotive industry.

During the next 11 years I held a series engineering middle management positions in the various manufacturing departments of this plant gaining a wide range of experience in all aspects of the management of maintenance.

At the beginning of 1986, I moved to British Steel's Llanwern Works in South Wales where I became Departmental Engineer for the Cold Mill with total responsibility for a workforce of around 120 engineers and craftsmen and a revenue budget of approximately £3M per annum. During the next few years I was fortunate to be involved in large capital expenditure projects on the process lines for which I was responsible including an £80M modernisation of the Cold Rolling Mill in 1992.

In early 1994 I moved into a central engineering functional role where I had responsibility for ensuring that the British Steel Integrated Works [Port Talbot and Llanwern] were capable of attaining approval to the revised Quality Assurance Standard ISO 9002 : 1994. This revision included maintenance activities in the standard for the first time.

During the last four years, I have been responsible for ensuring that the Integrated Works has complied with the maintenance requirements of the various customer Quality Assurance Systems which have been created, mainly by the highly demanding automotive customers of British Steel plc. such as QS 9000 [Ford, General Motors, Chrysler] and SOGEDAC [Peugeot, Citroen, Renault]

This role has given me the opportunity to build up a wealth of experience in the field of Quality Assurance and the Management of Quality, particularly in the context of Maintenance Management. I have made some recommendations on the literature which I have found most useful in this arena and these are available via the Serafini Studios Internet Bookshop.

During this time I have also been fortunate enough to play a leading role in an Engineering Technical Assistance Agreement between British Steel plc. and the Nippon Steel Corporation of Japan [NSC] which was designed to assist British Steel in its aim to become a World's Leading Company in its field. I have visited NSC plants in Japan twice and have had the benefit of many meetings with senior engineering managers from NSC. Theirs is a culture very different to ours but I believe that there are many ways in which companies in the United Kingdom can benefit from the methods and philosophies which Japanese companies use. I will make recommendations in the Serafini Studios Internet Bookshop on books which I think may be useful in this arena. I have also included a Japanese page on this site for anyone who is, like me, interested in Japan, its culture and history.