Case Studies

HEALTHY INCREASE IN PROFITABILITY SINCE IMPLEMENTING Q-BASE

South Auckland Electroplaters managing director Raymond Greer reports a healthy increase in profitability since his company implemented Telarc Q-Base, the quality management system for small to medium sized enterprises.

Since achieving Q-Base last October, the company has dramatically reduced the amount of work that has to be done again and, with that, the number of credits to customers.

Prior to October, we would have been handling at least twice as many jobs that needed re-working, says Ray. It costs eleven times the original cost to re-work an article so it isn’t difficult to calculate the cost savings when you reduce re-worked jobs by two thirds.

The management system is helping to consolidate the growth that Raymond Greer set in motion in the early nineties. In May 1995 the small South Auckland electroplating business attracted the Manukau Business Development Board’s Small Business Award of the Month and the prize was a professional analysis by Coopers and Lybrand.

They identified what I had been feeling for some time; too much reliance was being placed by our five staff on me. There was a need to spread the load in order for us to grow with confidence. Enterprising Manukau advertised a presentation evening for Telarc Q-Base and I went along to see how it could assist this process.

We had already created a platform for a more goal-focused business. After failing to find a suitable computer programme to create workplace instructions for our business I hired a local university specialist who wrote us a tailor-made programme. We then adapted it to the Q-Base management system which required more accuracy and focus - exactly what we were counting on.

South Auckland Electroplaters 1979 Ltd now has a mission statement which, Raymond Greer says, took a whole day to create, but has proved extremely worthwhile. The statement: to provide a superior service to the metal finishing industry at an agreed quality and price, created within the framework of a safe, stable and enjoyable working environment for all staff members, is the benchmark for the entire business.

Our mission statement is our prime objective with every job we do, no matter how large or small. It combines a safe, pleasant working environment with the profitability goal and, importantly, customers’ needs. We would not have come up with such a focused, organised approach to our work without the contribution of Q-Base.

Other small businesses considering the management system for smaller organisations should not make the mistake of thinking Q-Base automatically provides quality, says Raymond Greer.

It trains you to carefully document your procedures so that you know exactly what you are doing and can check back if something goes wrong. It provides consistency of operations. If you are producing rubbish consistently, Q-Base will not alter that. If you are producing quality, Q-Base will help you to consistently produce quality. With credits for example, we immediately generate an internal report that traces the reason for having to issue a credit. And we ensure the same mistake is not made again. Once we grasped this concept in the early stages of the course we didn’t look back.

You realise how important a management system is once you have implemented it in your own business. I knew about the ISO 9000 quality management system for larger enterprises and was initially concerned we would be told how to operate our business rather than doing it ourselves. In fact, Q-Base passes the responsibility for running a good business back in our hands. It has made us think much more about our business as a whole - the total package and where we are going. Our previous approach was more piecemeal. And our clients are also looking at us in a more positive way. They tell us we have moved to their 'preferred customer’ list.