A little over two years ago, all associates of Atlas Steel Products Co. received a Qualigram from the president. While they were accustomed to receiving these as a primary form of communication within the company, maybe they didn't quite realize the impact that this particular one would have on the totality of their work. "We're launching our future, and we're going all the way!" was the message Lawrence Burr gave to his associates, thereby launching a journey toward achieving QS-9000 certification at the plant.

QS-9000 Certification Process

For an entire year, the associates of Atlas Steel of Twinsburg, Ohio, prepared the background work needed to obtain certification. In May 1996, the organization joined WINOC as a member and as a participant in a QS-9000 consortium of businesses wanting to learn about the standard. After a year of learning and benchmarking others, the organization formed an official QS-9000 Implementation Steering Committee, which was a multifunctional management team comprised of associates from every department within the organization. The Committee's task was to devise solid plans for documentation, training, and implementation.

Training and documentation were done simultaneously, Ed Basta, director of quality assurance and training, said. Each associate was asked to flow chart the duties and procedures of his job, and all were collected and put into a policy manual. At the same time, each associate was taking part in an 8-month training program that consisted of 48 classes. After receiving basic QS-9000 training and internal auditors' training from WINOC, a team of associates conducted the remaining plantwide sessions.

"The standard was covered with associates section by section," Basta said. "They learned why a section exists, how it applies to Atlas, and why it's good for us to do. The idea was driven home that this system is not a burden. It works for us."

All training was conducted and paid on overtime, Basta said. A 45-hour work week was set up and used for the 8-month period.

"We felt it was an investment we needed to make," Burr stressed.

By September 1997, Atlas' goal was to achieve certification by the year's end; however, this was later pushed back to March 1998. In December 1997, final documentation was prepared for the Steering Committee's review and the pre-assessment phase.

"We were looking specifically for areas of weakness," Basta said. "This phase adds some cost, but it's certainly worth it."

The remaining time until March was spent addressing pre-assessment issues. There were 66 specific issues to be addressed.

"This number is below average but still very challenging," Burr said.

On Friday, March 20, the final management review meeting was held. Weekly management review meetings had been held throughout and led by the Lead Auditor, Atlas' accounting manager.

In late March, the company was assessed by its registrar, Smithers Quality Assessments. It took two auditors three days to completely assess the quality system. To meet the QS-9000 requirements, the auditors could have no major findings or minor findings with recommendations in the initial assessment.

Certification to QS-9000 and ISO-9002 was received on April 2, 1998, as all 64 associates were confident that their hard work, dedication, and commitment to success would pay off the first time around.

"We've created a business system in quality that gives us a pathway toward continuous improvement," Burr said. "Finally, we have a formal way to do what we've been doing informally all along." He added that the organization has absorbed the QS-9000 system as the way it does business, not as a tack-on quality system.

"Leadership's commitment was essential to our success," Basta said. "Bo [Burr] said we're going all the way or we're not going to start, and we did it really in less than a year!"

While Atlas' leadership was committing substantial thought, time, and resources to achieving QS-9000 certification, it was doing a complete evaluation of the company. In December 1996, Atlas purchased a substantial amount of new equipment. At the same time, the organization decided to convert its workforce structure into self-directed work teams.

"It was a real journey," Basta said. "We had completely revamped the operations department into a self-directed environment which together with the new equipment installation and training, seemed like an enormous task."

"But the two dovetailed each other beautifully," Burr added. "We were looking at processes and dealing with issues simultaneously."

This enormous overhaul was possible due to a lack of internal cultural battles. The spirit of employee involvement and continuous improvement has always been stressed at Atlas, Burr and Basta said.

Basta added, "Bo [Burr] bought the company in 1983, and there has been an employee involvement culture ever since. His philosophy is that you get the best solutions from the employees who actually do the work. Associates are accustomed to being involved in making decisions and empowered to implement them."

Not surprising, these change initiatives caused a phenomenal shockwave at Atlas for a time.

"During all of the activity, we considered it management's job to provide the resources to let the associates improve the processes themselves," Burr said.

And this activity dedicated toward achieving QS-9000 certification, implementing self-directed work teams, and upgrading equipment has led to improvements above and beyond the expected.

"Employees, through their involvement and training, began asking questions which led to forming teams to make technical and process improvements," Burr said.

For example:



A team devoted to improving work on a slitter helped produce 50 percent more output on the machine, better quality and less rework.

A Cut-to-Length Team found ways to dramatically decrease scrap and produce 30 percent more output in that area of the plant.

A Material Handling Team comprised of shop-floor operators reassessed the plant's layout which yielded a complete change in Atlas' raw material area and 15 percent more storage space. Now associates have quicker access to material through a stacker crane racking system.

Also during this team activity, Atlas installed a bar code retrieval system which "dramatically improved the output of the plant," Basta said.

The results of these dramatic changes produced output so great that in 1997, the organization realized the opportunity to close its plant in Chicago and do all production from the Twinsburg facility.

The impact of this change on costs was enormous. In January 1996, the company was operating two plants, three shifts, and had 80 percent on-time delivery to customers. Today, there is one plant, two shifts, and 99 percent on-time delivery.

"Basically, we had two underutilized facilities in effect, and now we have one fully utilized facility," Burr said. "Also, our capacity for growth is huge because we're still sitting on two shifts with very little overtime. Now, we have a more solid financial footing to launch acquisitions."

The associates of Atlas Steel Products Co. are charged and excited about the success they've achieved through a solid culture of employee input and a structured quality system.

Basta summed it up with, "The quality system made this happen by documenting good things. The change to a self-directed environment made it difficult, but at the same time, it helped along the way. QS-9000 has given us a way to communicate throughout the facility all the changes that were happening and the significance of those changes."

"Does this quality system work?" Burr asks. "You bet!" is the answer. "It's a tool for us to profitably exceed customers' expectations [the Atlas mission statement]. It's a tool for us to deliver on our quality and strategy and mission statement to profitably deliver higher-quality product in a more timely fashion with a greater value to customers than ever before."