Dyco Electronics is a profitable manufacturing company with 58 employees working in a 25,000 sq. ft. company-owned facility in Hornell. They serve government and commercial customers who demand top quality and who have been happy with what Dyco delivers; sales are growing and the company is hiring. Yet the owner decided last year to invest in preparing the company for certification to the aerospace industry’s standardized quality management system, AS 9100.
To understand that decision, some background on the company is helpful. Dyco manufactures a wide range of custom magnetics, including transformers, reactors, inductors, chokes, coils, planar transformers, surface mount transformers and just about anything that involves copper foil, magnet wire, laminations, ferrites, toroids, and any other type of transformer materials. With relatively small runs of ever-changing products, profitability and customer satisfaction are heavily dependent on tight quality controls.
Originally, Dyco’s quality procedures were driven by MIL-SPEC, which are requirements related to standards established by the US Department of Defense. When ISO standards and requirements gained international visibility a couple decades ago, some of Dyco’s larger customers exerted pressure on the company to follow that path but then backed off, choosing instead to use their own auditors to insure that Dyco’s quality control procedures met those customers’ requirements.
Company president and CEO, Gregory Georgek, explained, "We always had a high level of quality and good systems in place, but not a lot of formal documentation of our processes. We have a goal of continually improving, and we recognized that the quality consistency that we wanted just wasn’t there."
Georgek has a long-term perspective on the company, which has been in Hornell for 53 years, and he believes that continually re-investing in the business and pushing it to change and evolve is essential. "I saw everybody here as working at full capacity, so the hard thing for me as the owner was to understand how we could find the time to take on this project. But I realized that getting these systems in place was necessary to achieve the vision of where I want the company to be five years from now -- which is to grow and achieve a higher level of professionalism -- so we just made it a priority."
The first step came shortly after Jeff Wilkins was hired as Program Manager three years ago. One of his first assignments was to create work instructions for everything that was happening in the plant and the front office. Georgek explained that this occurred prior to a decision to pursue AS 9100 certification; it was simply another step in the process of continuous improvement. With the work instructions solidified, the management team tackled the question of what the next most valuable initiative would be.
Georgek said, "We had worked with AM&T before, so we contacted them for advice -- AS vs. ISO, understanding the resources required, how long it would take, and what kind of end result we could expect. In other words, we wanted to know in advance what this would do for the company." Staff also solicited opinions from their larger customers about what would be best for the company; those customers were encouraging but also said that Dyco’s not having certification would not negatively impact those relationships.
"Many years ago, we felt like other people were trying to force us to become certified so we resisted," explained Georgek. "But we try to always be working on things that will position the company for growth and sustainability on into the future, so we decided to look at the AS 9100 certification decision from one perspective: what’s good for Dyco and our internal operations. And that’s what drove our decision."
The company engaged AM&T assistance in the person of Bob Mann. "Bob recognized that we had lots of elements -- the systems and the procedures -- already in place and explained that we just had to formalize and document them," said Wilkins. "He met with us weekly and kept us on track."
Georgek said, "I can’t see a company doing this without a consultant group. If you just read a standard and then implement it for your company, the tendency is to do much more than is really required. Using AM&T and Bob Mann has helped us implement a much more reasonable system."
Wilkins explained, "There was a tipping point where those employees slow to respond wanted to get on board and not miss the boat. And that’s when real culture change became evident inside the company."
"Having everyone involved in creating the new system helped create a new mindset," said Wilkins. "We wanted everyone to gain an across-the-board understanding of how the company does business, and for everyone to have a better grasp of each others’ jobs. When this happens, things run more smoothly and problems get solved faster."
"Right, but having the strong quality systems in place doesn’t mean that everything is magically fixed," noted Georgek. "Of course we still run into quality issues, but how we handle them is different, and the way we resolve them and prevent re-occurrence is different."
Wilkins said that going through the process of earning AS 9100 certification also gave everyone a better understanding of what their customers’ quality auditors want to see and why it’s important. "And that also means we can now do a better job of explaining what we do and how we do it to our customers."
Asked about the future, Georgek said that Dyco’s upcoming initiatives will focus on marketing, improving the company’s online presence, increased sales outreach, and adding some new equipment. "It’s good for the company for me to be less involved in day-to-day decision-making and to have people and systems in place that allow me to spend more time on sales and future-oriented projects. One goal is to build a company that is successful in my absence, and our improved quality system is an important step in that direction."
