2010 was a busy year. Advanced Machine & Fabrication, Inc. emerged from the impending doom of 2009 fairly unscathed. The company gained in net sales, received a really nice manufacturing award, broke new ground by receiving ISO 9001:2008 and AS9100 B certification for its quality management program, and added a coordinate measuring machine to its inventory. Looking back, I’m a little amazed. But, if it is true that there is no rest for the weary, more hard work lies ahead. 2011 is a new year with a whole new set of goals and great anticipation about meeting them. In ISO language it’s called “continual improvement” and ultimately it points to meeting the customer’s expectations of excellence.
Advanced Machine has experienced many changes since its humble beginning in 1999. Back then, it was a different management team with a different management style. Today’s shop is smaller, leaner and more efficient. Choices, though at times difficult, have been made in order to create a profile that is more personable. The idea of churning out large quantities of product in a big manufacturing environment has been altered to fit a niche. It’s a scaled down approach to manufacturing that utilizes good communication and management skills to meet customer requirements just as much as physical means.
In order to successfully compete in this challenging industrial landscape, all components – facility, equipment, management, employees - must work together like a well-oiled machine (pun intended). This takes several things: 1. total hands-on involvement by management to ensure everyone is provided the right tools throughout the organization to do their jobs competently, and 2. a solid quality management program which is practiced diligently in order to identify and correct areas of weakness. Small manufacturing companies like Advanced Machine have a distinct advantage to excel on these fronts based simply on their footprint. There is undoubtedly a more intimate relationship with the shop floor where things can be observed and communicated relatively quickly under less square footage. Assessments happen on a daily, if not hourly, basis and problems, when occurring, can be immediately contained and addressed by corrective actions. Larger organizations, even when run as smoothly as possible, provide more space to “hide”, and I do mean hide literally. It might be the employee who takes an exceptionally long bathroom break, the scrap parts that get stuffed into lunchboxes, the missing calipers, and the manager who artfully dodges paperwork. It sounds implausible due to all the well-meaning tools in place to counteract just this kind of thing, and yet it happens. Not only is it costly, the eroding effect on the company can almost be crippling. Hands-on management and an excellent quality management program will help, yet there are still “pockets” of problems. The bigger the company, the more pockets and places to hide.
But being small is not easy either and there are many challenges. There must be thought and planning involved upfront with any job order. Complicated production schedules need to be worked out, customer communication established throughout the project, equipment maintenance and required purchasing requirements drawn up, employee’s skill levels assessed, and cost analysis or feasibility studies created … just to name a few things. Basically, it’s the same as in any large organization, however done with fewer people and resources. Stretched out in such a way, it would be easy to miss a few things. That’s where a really good quality management program comes in. It’s a rule book of sorts. It doesn’t mean things work 100% all the time, but following the rules makes it easier to identify the problems when they do occur because usually it means one of those rules was overlooked. The benefit of being small is that there is less walking back to the source of the problem because there is simply less road, with fewer diversions, to follow.
Small is particularly advantageous when it comes to certification. It is, beyond a doubt, much easier to put processes in place while there is still a blank canvas. Designing a quality management system without having to take a larger scope of operations into consideration allows for a clearer view of the finished product and helps to streamline it. Working with a boiler plate, growth management of the QMS should be a direct analysis of new processes functioning within the framework. This leads to the inverse conclusion that just as small is good for certification, so is certification good for small. Quality management, as mentioned above, creates the rules by which a company functions, and though we all like to work without rules, they are essential in maintaining good performance. A small company can operate efficiently and have excellent performance output, but how will they know for certain? How accurately did they meet their goals and, even more relevant, are their goals true for the organization and its customers? Without defining quality objectives and measuring the outcome with some form of metrics and trending analysis, it is just “guessing”. Small companies like Advanced Machine do just that, guess. It’s because measuring seems sort of silly when the numbers aren’t all that big to begin with. The shocker is that measuring still works with small numbers and produces an accurate picture on which to base projections and a well-defined and achievable growth plan.
As Advanced Machine begins the year 2011, it goes forth hopeful for growth and prosperity. It is not alone; there are a lot of small businesses driving this economy. According to the SBA, small businesses employ more than half of private sector employees with 90% employing less than 20 people.1 They produce roughly half of the private Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and create, on average, about two-thirds of net new jobs annually.2 That’s not chump change. Small businesses are the backbone of this country’s economy and they will continue to be so for a long time. So, for those companies who find themselves making excuses for a lack of largeness, stop it. Stop aplogizing and remember, small is not only good, it is mighty good.
Footnotes 1-2: Small Business Administration, Small Business Share of Economic Growth, 2001.
