IQMS
Creating Sustainable
Business Growth
Strategies To Improve Operational
Efficiency & Product Quality
BROUGHT TO YOU BY:
2 | Creating Sustainable Business Growth
Product Quality Says More About Your Company
Than A Year Of Marketing Campaigns
The emphasis on product quality has become especially
heightened in the digital era when customers can click online
and quickly spread feedback about their experience with your
company. Enterprise software buyers are increasingly looking
to online review sites including Capterra to hear what actual
users are saying. Manufacturer’s customers often post their
opinions of products they purchase on Facebook, LinkedIn,
Twitter and many other social media platforms today.
“There’s an inflection point happening in the relationships
manufacturers have with their customers,” Columbus says.
“Customers are changing the channels they choose to learn
about who they will buy from, and who they’ll trust, making
quality the most important differentiator of all.”
“Product quality says more about your company than a
year of marketing campaigns,” Columbus says. “Earning and
keeping trust starts with customer-driven quality goals from
the shop floor to the top floor. Given how transparent every
manufacturer’s product quality levels are is making trust the
most valuable currency of all.”
What kinds of targeted changes and tweaks can
manufacturers make to their processes to drive quality? How
can they implement those changes without ratcheting up the
cost of your operations?
In this report, we’ll look at the simple steps your company
can take to boost product quality and sell it to your customers
while improving overall efficiency and your bottom line.
The bottom line is that product quality is the most
powerful growth catalyst any business has today. Being
known for producing highly reliable, trusted products that
deliver beyond customer expectations is one of the fastest,
most profitable ways to grow.
A recent survey by IQMS, a leader in providing Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP) solutions for repetitive, discrete
and batch process manufacturers, found that 92 percent
of manufacturers say product quality is what defines their
success in the eyes of customers. Quality far outpaced “on-
time delivery” (51 percent); “unique design, tooling, and
production capabilities” (32 percent); and even “low price”
(24 percent).
“Customer-driven quality goals have a galvanizing effect
across all of manufacturing operations. From the single-
plant to a global network of production centers, giving
every team member a chance to see how they make an
impact for the customer is very powerful”, ” says Louis
Columbus, a principal with IQMS.
3 | Creating Sustainable Business Growth
Collaborate With Customers
On the customer services side of your company, it’s important
for companies to have a deep awareness of expectations
and public feedback. One way to achieve this goal is to
collaborate with customers as much as possible.
“Don’t be afraid of what customers are saying either
privately or on social media,” Columbus says. “Listen to the
complaints. Sometimes it’s the customers who are carrying
the biggest bullhorns who have the best new ideas.”
Paying close attention to customer feedback — the
good and the bad — will also help ensure that your
company only produces products and features that
customers find the most relevant and valuable.
“Voice of the Customer programs are worth it,
and using them as a basis for creating Customer
Advisory Councils is a must-do for any manufacturer,’
Columbus says. “The quickest path to manufacturing
mediocrity is to forget about the customer and
attempt to overwhelm them with features alone.”
A tendency to add features to a new product can be
especially tricky however when rolling out a new model.
Customers have high expectations that every new
iteration will have new features and improved quality. By
having customer-driven quality goals, roadmaps stay on
track to customer needs, preferences and wants. Or as
Columbus jokingly puts it, “The goal needs to be delivering
product quality that is so good, customers feel like they
are getting a pony for Christmas when your product
arrives. Products that don’t respect and reflect customer
needs end up on the Island of Misfit Toys,” Columbus
said. High-quality products deliver excellent customer
experiences. The goal is not to just keep adding in features
for competitive parity of trying to be more like a market
leader. Manufacturers have a greater chance of being a
market leader if they delight customers and earn trust.
Driving Quality Throughout Your Operations
For manufacturing quality strategies to deliver their most
value, they need to unify the front-office and back-office,
adding speed, scale, and simplicity of all manufacturing
operations.
An excellent framework for making enterprise quality
management a company-wide strength is Six Sigma.
What makes this data-driven methodology, so effective in
minimizing variability, streamlining quality management
methods and improving business processes is how customer-
centric it is. Customer-driven data leads to the best Six
Sigma outcomes across manufacturing operations.
An important key success factor to making Six
Sigma projects successful is senior management buy-
in and support. “The majority of Six Sigma projects and
deployments where the CEO is the change management
champion succeed,” Columbus said. Six Sigma is adept at
eliminating errors in the manufacturing process— often
one of the most difficult parts of the business to improve.
Columbus also recommends adopting enterprise-
wide quality management and compliance software
* Results from a 2017 survey conducted by
IQMS and completed by 125 manufacturers.
What Manufacturers Say
Customers Look For During
Site Visits*
61%
50%
52%
24%
17%
Commitment
to quality
& continuous
improvement
Unique
technical &
production
skills
Professional,
clean &
efficient
operations
Capacity
of plant &
equipment
Skilled
workforce
4 | Creating Sustainable Business Growth
that provides valuable insights into how quality goals
can be achieved. These systems can also provide
guidance and help in defining which areas of compliance
need the most attention, and which are running well.
“Quality management and compliance systems also
provide insights into supplier quality and performance.
It’s invaluable knowing who the highest and lowest
performing suppliers the company uses,” Columbus says.
Staying in compliance with government and regulatory
requirements is a challenge for all manufacturers and is one of
the most daunting parts of doing business. This is especially
true in industries where information about every part used in
a product needs to be tracked for regulatory reasons — such
as in the medical device industry.
“To excel at quality management and compliance,
manufacturers need to redefine how they capture,
aggregate, analyze and use data from the manufacturing
process,” Columbus says. “It has to be an enterprise-
wide effort to succeed, one driven by the goal of
turning compliance into a competitive advantage.”
Lower The Cost Of Operations
Automation can be a major game-changer for improving
efficiency and reducing operational costs. Although there is
an upfront investment required for the technology needed
to automate parts of the manufacturing process, the right
software can save your company in the long run.
For example, just improving the way orders are
taken can reap big rewards. Many companies still use
paper or other ways of manually creating and tracking
orders. But by integrating CRM, Configure Price Quote
(CPQ) and ERP systems, manufacturers can overhaul
their quoting process and increase order capture
accuracy. And this leads to higher product quality,
delighted customers, and faster revenue growth.
Columbus points to one instance involving a company
that manufactures large, expensive trucks that are made
with exact and often differing specifications. Because
the trucks are customized, it often takes six revisions
to the purchase order to define a buildable truck that
is ready for manufacturing to start producing. With up
to 12,000 orders coming in every year, and the cost of
preparing each order averaging about $165, the company
was paying dearly just for making a new order.
But after implementing a more integrated approach
that includes CRM, CPQ and ERP systems, the order
process became automated and streamlined and
now saves the company about $1 million a year.
Real Solutions In Real Time
The importance of real-time monitoring on the shop floor also
can’t be overstated.
If your facility is not using real-time monitoring
it can often take weeks before financial data, or
other reports reveal operational problems — and
by then it’s too late to make needed changes.
5 | Creating Sustainable Business Growth
With real-time monitoring, especially overall equipment
effectiveness (OEE) metrics, you can get a daily glimpse
of how your machines and systems are running, enabling
greater decision-making accuracy.As Columbus points
out, manufacturers are often using very expensive,
sophisticated machinery and using automation and OEE
can help ensure you get the most out of that investment.
How To Shop For A Manufacturing ERP System
The right ERP system is the cornerstone of having efficient
operations ensuring quality control and exceeding customer
expectations. Here are three ideas for helping you invest in
the best system for your company.
1. Look at what other companies in your industry are using.
Befriend other company owners in your industry and find
out which system they’re running. Ask if those companies
will let you come in and see how their system operates.
2. Don’t know any other company owners? Columbus says
that ERP vendors can be a great source for helping
you find other users in your industry willing to provide
feedback. Ask the vendor to do a demonstration with
your data. Vendors are sometimes willing to come into
your company, build a dashboard with their system and
show you how it runs. And this is typically done during
a sales cycle. Benchmark vendors by how well they gain
insights from your data using their software.
3. Ask around and go to industry conferences: Industry
conferences are also a good opportunity to get user
feedback. If you’re attending a show where other ERP
vendors have displays set up, ask around to find other
attendees who’ve used their products.
Columbus also recommends working with an industry
analyst firm to seek tips on where to buy an ERP
system. Or check online and peruse crowd-reviewing
sites such as Capterra to see what other customers
are saying about each company’s software.
Conclusion
Choosing to excel at product quality and turn compliance
into a competitive advantage are the catalysts driving the
greatest growth in manufacturing today. Defining specific
goals and objectives for quality management and compliance
are also the foundation of scaling product line sales by
delivering more than customers expect, delighting them in
the process. Greater speed, scale, and simplicity pervade
any manufacturing operation that chooses to put customers’
quality requirements first.
Making quality a galvanizing force in any company needs
to start by providing each member of the manufacturing
team a clear view of how and why their work matters.
Creating strong ownership is critical for making quality
management and compliance initiatives a core part of
daily operations. When CEOs champion these initiatives,
the probability of success increases exponentially. Getting
quality so ingrained into a company that measures its
success by its customers’ satisfaction levels is the quickest
path to profitable growth and earning customers for life.
Manufacturers who believe
that having a “business
culture of excellence” is the
most important factor driving
product quality, according to
a survey conducted by IQMS.
64%
6 | Creating Sustainable Business Growth
This report was prepared by Meagan Parish,
an editor with the Manufacturing Group,
Advantage Business Media, a data-driven
marketing solutions company serving industry
professionals in the manufacturing, science,
and design engineering markets. For more
information, visit advantagemedia.com.
IQMS uniquely combines ERP and MES
functionality to give manufacturers a
comprehensive end-to-end software suite
for running the business, backed by the real-
time performance and scalability. Developed
specifically for mid-market repetitive, discrete
and batch processes the IQMS system helps
manufacturers optimize profitability and
efficiency to support customer demands.
ABOUT THIS REPORT ABOUT IQMS
