Quality Thinking

I was reading one of my favorite magazines the other day when I came across an article on the Cost of Quality.  This intrigued me and as I was reading the author made the statement that quality cost can be 20%-30% of sales.  These costs are the costs not only of implementing quality programs, but the costs associated with diagnosing and fixing the errors of your day to day production.  I really have to agree with this 100%.  I have seen our company fix product and even scrap poor products and that just really hurts.  We as managers/owners really get a pain in our side when we have to do things like this.  Not only does hurt the pocket book, but the morale.  It is so easy and so cheap to implement quality thoughts in to your production staff.  It’s the retention that is hard.   We are going through that right now.  We have a younger work staff and we struggle to retain the quality trains of thought sometimes. We are actively reinforcing over and over again the teachings.  That is where the implementation costs really come into play.  But I would rather spend money teaching and reinforcing than patching and scrapping.  A perfectly delivered product speaks volumes for who you are and what your company is about.  I really am starting to see the tides turning as guys are more about how to progress than feel sorry about themselves.  The other day we had an issue with a form that was not caught in time and we had to patch a product.  This was a setback, but what I saw for the first time was immediate discussion about what we can do to correct this in the future.  There was no finger pointing, no complaining, just instant brainstorming and evaluation.  That is quality thinking in my mind and this making me very proud that the retention is happening.  Good things are happening! 

We Are Dalmaray

My brother and I were talking today about the business of precasting.  He is going to a local college for a degree in business administration.  As we were talking he mentions to me, “You know our business does not fit anything I have learned.” I had to think about this and of course I am engineer not a business man.  So after thought, I had to agree with him.  Personally I think we make the best septic tanks in the state of Wisconsin I think, possibly the nation.  But I can’t ship them to Texas or California, it’s just not logical.  And even if I targeted septic tanks for a marketing campaign I may pick up one or two customers and that’s it.  OK so septics are a hard sells, what about our other products?  As our discussion progressed we took apart product by product and how we can sell them better.  Eventually it turned into more a conversation about the company and not the products.  We learned that we can’t sell products on price.  Price is not our game that is for our competition.  We don’t beat each other up over prices. That’s not who we are, that is not how we were raised.  So that’s out.  What do we do?  First, quality, our quality standard is so high it makes some of our production guys ill.  I challenge anyone to make a more quality product than us.  Second, service.  Our service is untouched.  We do whatever it takes to get the job done.  WHATEVER IT TAKES!  We have had spans where the production crew including myself have considered putting a camper up because we were pouring around the clock, living on Monsters and coffee.  Our installation crews have done the same thing, just in the field.  They have had months without a day off.  Is it the nature of the business, sometimes, but we excel at it.  Lastly, and most important we don’t go away.  Being that we can’t sell price we get our asses kicked 99% of the time.  But you know we keep getting back up and doing it again.  That is who we are, maybe it’s the stubborn Norwegian blood, but we don’t quit.  We keep bidding jobs, we keep spreading quality, we keep high quality service, and we don’t lose who we are when times get rough.  So who are we, we are Dalmaray and we excel!