A Quality Culture Focused on the Customer
Rapid expansion comes with its own challenges, but at BOFA a quality culture introduced over the last two years is paying significant dividends in delivering both improved output and high levels of customer satisfaction.
One of the key investments in recent times has been the integration of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system into business processes. This is now contributing to better and more efficient workplace practices, while the company’s ISO9001 (2015) accreditation is central to ensuring UK production, which supplies world markets, keeps pace with a growing order book for the company’s innovative fume and dust extraction systems.
Quality is fundamental to BOFA’s success, particularly as the product range widens to take account of new technologies and the demands of markets in 120 countries.
In such a dynamic environment, maintaining quality is central to delivering on customer promises – and BOFA takes a multi-tiered and KPI-focused approach to meeting these commitments both in terms of delivery times and product performance.
This starts with implementing tools and measures that add value to the production process by identifying non-conformance issues early.
BOFA has set up a 3-tiered intervention approach, involving shop floor, supervisory and management engagement to resolve any production issues as quickly as possible. Occasionally this will lead to the launch of a continuous improvement project as part of BOFA’s lean programme, which aims to reduce process waste and add value to customers.
The BOFA quality experts are also responsible for supply chain engagement, with a dedicated quality engineer rigorously assessing any new suppliers for technical capability, quality systems, delivery capacity and financial viability. Only suppliers that fulfil these stretching criteria will be approved by BOFA.
It’s a strategy that is delivering success against key measures such as ‘right first time pass rates’ and ‘On Time, In Full’ targets – results that also reflect the culture of quality that now permeates the entire organisation.
Indeed, this quality culture features prominently in the induction programme for every new employee, including senior managers. It helps engender a ‘no blame’ culture that encourages the reporting of issues and celebrates suggestions for improvements. It epitomises the BOFA way of working.
