11/02/2020
Our closing chapter highlights a few thoughts from our CEO Mike Brown about Dependability.
When Aero-Plastics earned the Boeing Supplier of the Year, we were asked by the Boeing communications team to support efforts creating a vignette for the occasion.
I was asked by the Boeing communications team to explain the reason for our success. Frankly, I was not sure what to tell them.
We, the Aero-Plastics team, discussed all the steps we took to take care of our customers, and what it took to perform at a high level. At the end of the day, it came down to being Dependable. We simply wanted to be totally Dependable.
So was born our mantra, “Driven by Dependability”. It is a core value that has become engrained in our culture. To be dependable it takes so much more effort than most might think.
All Aero-Plastics’ team members must trust one another to be dependable to each other and our processes. Every morning representatives from each department meet and review all scheduled deliveries for the next month, and anything that may affect them. It is not just a flavor of the month, a banner on the wall or the claim to be perfect. When we are not perfect, being Dependable is communicating with our customers about our imperfection as soon as possible and correcting the situation as soon as possible at all costs.
How do you measure Dependability? With a Dependometer of course. You know the old saying, “you can’t control what you don’t measure”.
Our Dependometer compares how many chances we had to make a perfect shipment vs how many perfect shipments we made in a period. A perfect shipment is defined as the order being completed and shipped when we said we would be, in the quantity we promised, meeting all requirements and without our customer having to contact us after receipt.
If our customer had to contact us for a corrected pack list, material cert, FAI report, or heaven forbid non-conforming product…. the shipment was not perfect, and we were not totally Dependable.
Take note of all your business, home, and personal transactions of all kinds for a week.
See how many times businesses and individuals were truly dependable or not. It takes a lot of effort to be totally Dependable. It is our goal at Aero-Plastics, and one we will continue to try and achieve every day. Think about how wonderful it would be if everyone were totally Dependable.
We appreciate you following our story over the last few weeks and hope you have learned a little more about the team at Aero-Plastics and the advantages of partnering with a supplier that understand the importance of being Dependable.
