What Gets Measured Get Improved

As part of our Customer Focused Strategy, we have set a goal to significantly decrease the number of mistakes and errors that we cause that negatively impact our customers. We call these mistakes and errors - Defects. We have set a goal to decrease our defects by 50% during the next 90 days.

There's an old adage that says "What gets measured gets improved". To help us in achieving our defect goal, we have established a system to measure the number of defects that occur within our company.

As part of this process, we are asking each department to "OWN" their defects. To achieve our goal, we need each department to willingly self-report any defects that take place within their department. Each department manager will then report these defects our weekly manager conference call.

Here's a rundown of the departments and the manager(s) who is responsible for reporting their results:

Grandview Admin - Susan Lopez & Todd Hurlburt
General Transport - Jeff Doss & Ron Covington
Grandview Plant - Todd Hurlburt
Yakima & Toppenish Plants - Rob Derrey
Pasco Plant - Jeff Bonnington
Walla Walla Plant - Don Olson
Dealer Business - Susan Lopez

Here's how we will be categorizing our defects:

Major Shipping Defects
- Spill Over 5 Gallons
- DOT Recordable Accident
- OSHA Recordable Injury
- Product Cross Dump
- Customer Run Out - Our Fault
- Damage to Customer's Property
- Product Delivered on Wrong Day
- Tank Overfill (95% Capacity)

Minor Shipping Defects
- Product Retain -Our Fault
- Wrong Product Delivered
- Delivered to Wrong Location
- Bill of Lading Error - Missing/Incomplete/Incorrect
- Minor Spill - Less than 5 gallons
- Minor Injury (Medical Assistance Required, but no time loss)

Major Administrative Defects
- Billing Wrong Customer Account
- Incorrectly Applying Customer Payment to Wrong Account
- EFT Wrong Customer

Minor Admin Defects
- Billing Incorrect Product
- Over/Under Charge Customer
- Customer Call Not Returned Within Reasonable Timeframe
- No Invoice Sent to Customer

We are all part of this process. As you see customer defects take place, please report them to your managers. We are confident that as we measure our performance, we are going to see our performance improve. We will keep everyone updated on our performance by reporting our progress in the weekly Team Update.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Tony@repowell.net

Tony Christensen
www.repowell.net