Every business, manufacturing or otherwise, should strive to develop a strong foundation. When commitment to excellence and quality initiatives also flow from the bottom up in an organization, then great performance will no doubt follow.

“ISO (International Organization for Standardization) is an industry standard, but most companies have a quality manager that drives everything,” said Richard Uber, Metcam manager and Six Sigma Black Belt. “At Metcam, we’re trying to get the people to drive it and the only way they can do a better job is if we give them better information.”

To that end, Uber and Metcam have developed a 15-point flip chart or guide to help employees fully understand the company’s quality systems. The guide covers key performance indicators, standards of communication, processes, planning and more (see below).

“Instead of asking a supervisor and getting two or three different answers, they can rely on this one source whenever they have any questions,” Uber said.

ISO 9001 certified since 2001, Metcam maintains and improves the basic systems for excellence. The Quality Management System is owned by everyone in the company and needs the support of every employee.

Dedicated to providing a bottom-up/top-down/side-to-side focus on making processes better, Metcam utilizes the many subject matter experts in its employ to realize improvements that give more value to the customer and/or make things easier to perform. The ISO flip chart adds more value to the company’s pervasive continuous improvement, value-add mindset.