By: Jeff White, Induron EVP & General Manager
The last time you heard from me was in a blog about our Annual Christmas party. At that event, the Induron team not only celebrated the Christmas Holiday, but also our safety record and awards. Another thing we like to celebrate, which falls in line with our core value of “reliability,” is when we meet our quality goal. We only have one goal when it comes to quality: Get our customers the product they need.
We have two key performance indicators that we measure to see how we stack up. The first is cycle count, which is a production measurement that ensures the products meet our specification and quality control standards at time of production. Depending on the product, we measure volume solids, density, color, sag, cure and several other paint related measurables. If we need to adjust anything, we count that as a hit.
For 2017, we met our goal of more than 90 percent of product batches coming off right the first time with no adjustments required. The remaining 10 percent are adjusted to meet our standards before putting into inventory. However, making a great, reliable product is only the first part of the equation.
The second part is making sure we ship the right products and components to our customers. With 99.8 percent accuracy required, this goal is even more stringent and is a tough bar to reach. Though these stretch goals challenge our team, they are attainable with hard work, dedication and efficient shipping processes.
We measure these goals quarterly and exceeded them for the fourth quarter of 2017. Our success rate for the ever increasingly difficult goal is little above 50 percent—an impressive rate if I do say so myself. To celebrate the hard work and attention to detail that our entire operations department put in to reach those goals, we visited one of Birmingham’s newest attractions, Top Golf. We don’t have many golfers in the bunch, but we had a great time and enjoyed great fellowship while swinging the clubs.