Faring well in two recognised Queensland Awards, winning a Smart State Award and runner-up in an Export Award, would have been reason for most companies to reflect on their achievements. Not so for AI Scientific CEO Stephen Pronk, who used the awards accomplishment as motivation to achieve more for his company.

Recently celebrating a 30 year anniversary, AI Scientific supplies analytical instruments to industrial, environmental and research labs in Australia and internationally.

“After doing well in the State-based awards, I wanted to know what was needed to ensure AI Scientific would rate just as well internationally. It was obvious that we would have to become a world class company to achieve this,” Stephen Pronk said.

“We discovered that QMI Solutions offered a benchmarking service that could not only tell us where we rated on the world class scale, but also provided us with a plan of what we could do to transform AI Scientific into a world class company.”

Since 1993, QMI Solutions has helped companies become world class based on practices successfully used and proven by world class organisations. The challenge for SME key decision makers is to make continuous improvement part of company culture and ensure the journey to become world class doesn’t stall.

The ‘Manufacturing Microscope’ benchmarking tool compares the subject company’s practices against those of world class organisations. It then rates the company and identifies areas requiring attention based on the theory that by maintaining a reasonable balance between practice (the established processes and procedures) and performance (what is actually achieved), gains in performance are underpinned by the organisation’s practices or changes and improvements in practices are the result of real performance gains.

Stephen Pronk explained that AI Scientific’s benchmarking score provided the stake in the ground needed before mapping the way forward.

“The Manufacturing Microscope demonstrated that our performance were well behind our practices. A world class company rates 80 or above on both its practices and performance. We rated 76 on our practice (sector average is 69) and 62 on our performance (sector average is 65). However, we have set ourselves a two-year goal to improve our rating to that of a world class company.”

“It also demonstrated that we needed to raise the bar on our project management skills and to better integrate roles within the organisation. Namely engineering roles needed to be better integrated with marketing roles as well as those in production and the finance departments. Related to this was the need for better communication across the company too. The two areas of engineering and market research specifically required more attention.”

“In practical terms, it’s a question of doing the math. If our practices were between 20-25% behind our performance, we could save at least $700,000 over a 3 year project by just bringing our performance up to the same level.”

“While this is a substantial amount of money, the opportunities lost from not having the best practices are more difficult to measure, but I anticipate they are worth more to the company than $700,000.”

For some time, Stephen Pronk had known that having a world class strategy was right. Having attended various courses since 1989 and with the marketplace becoming more competitive, there was a general feeling within AI Scientific that more needed to be done, but it was just a case of identifying exactly what.

“Our market has become extremely competitive especially with the advent of the Internet over the last ten years and to me it has become even more critical to use world class practices in your organisation if you want to survive.”

“AI Scientific staff participated in various workshops to achieve this end. Our first contact with QMI Solutions was at an Accelerated Product Development (APD) program about ten years ago. It demonstrated to us how important it was to be disciplined in developing products and to trust our engineers more on the issues of timeframes, costs and quality, rather than setting unrealistic expectations.”

QMI Solutions’ APD program advocated the use of best practice product development practices, both in the development of new products and by reducing time-to-market to ensure maximum profit. The APD program, also known as Proseed, helped us implement best practices such as Stage GateTM to ensure time and resources are spent developing products that have the best chance at success. The training the APD program provided is now part of QMI Solutions’ Lean Product Development offering.

“One of the best lessons learnt from the APD program that stayed with us was the importance of time-to-market in the product development cycle. It states that there is a point of obsolescence that is fixed in time for any product. A product can become obsolete for any number of reasons; a competitive product, technology or market shift, and regulatory issues are all reasons for a product’s obsolescence. To ensure your products generate maximum profits, it needs to be introduced into the marketplace as soon as possible, because any delay in that product launch eats into your net profit period.”

“It is an easy trap to fall into. Delays or postponing the release of a product to market simply reduces the lifespan of the product, eats into profits and costs the company money.”

Stephen Pronk also says QMI Solutions assisted with the Office Layout of new premises in 2002.

“Even things such as the layout of your premises can contribute to your world class rating. For us, I wanted a structure that was conducive to communication among all staff. QMI assisted with the layout of our current premises by having the meeting room/kitchen as a hub and all other areas based around it. It made a big difference from our previous premises that was under seven different locations including two that were across the street.”

“QMI Solutions personnel provide an extra set of eyes for issues that sometimes escape internal staff. They’ll question the non-value adding processes and activities and offer an insight into increasing value for your organisation and ultimately, your customers.”

He says one of the major benefits from contact with QMI Solutions is as a sounding board and a reinforcer of the value of best practice in your organisation for the present and in the future.

“When you recognise that you need to go to HR training, you go to a HR provider and similarly, you go to QMI Solutions when you want the best in training and advice on manufacturing and product development practices.”

“The major challenge for AI Scientific, and I imagine for many companies, has always been to assess what our customers’ requirement will be ‘tomorrow’. This challenge is amplified when you are based outside your major markets in Europe and the US. AI Scientific regard ourselves as lucky to be able to tap into QMI Solutions knowledge and expertise to help us face, and successfully overcome, this challenge.”