In 1977, the rock singer Meatloaf released a hit song called “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.” While that statement may be true in love and relationships, in business two out of three isn’t good enough.
This also relates to the Iron Triangle, a concept that says there are three primary interrelated components to any project and, to maintain the triangle, you can change two but not all three. In sales terms this gets translated into this statement: “Price, quality, time – choose any two.” The inference is that to meet your budget and have outstanding quality, you’re going to have to settle for slower delivery times or to get quick delivery without blowing your budget, you will have to sacrifice quality. At Algood, we think that in today’s customer driven marketplace, the Iron Triangle (and Meatloaf’s formula) doesn’t cut it. To be a truly customer centred supplier, you have provide three out of three. That’s why we deliver outstanding quality in what are sometimes lightning-fast delivery times while remaining perfectly within budget. Here’s how we do it.
Believe it or not this is a story that starts ten years ago. In response to the economic downturn of 2008, we re-examined our business model and decided not to take the easy approach and slash costs, lay off employees and cut corners. Rather we took the path less traveled and decided we needed to become more efficient, more design focused and to better leverage the advantages of being a fully integrated manufacturer. We re-committed to putting our customers at the very centre of our operation.
That led to innovation in our production processes as well as in engineering and product design. Over the past ten years we have introduced more new product designs and improvements than we did in the preceding forty years. Many of those have been industry-firsts but all of them have been in response to the needs of customers.
We focused sharply on quality control and adopted strict ISO standards, examining processes and materials to ensure that every caster was perfect – before inspection. That, in turn, has led to NSF certification of many of our products and more impressively to a proven 99% quality completion rate.
We have become agile manufacturers using all the advantages of our in-house facilities – engineering & design, tool & die, robotic welding, stamping and injection moulding. As opposed to many corporately owned enterprises, we can turn on a dime to react to the marketplace. We are experts at creating custom solutions, from product design to the design of materials and processes and that makes us better able to react to the unique needs of our customers. We have more standard caster configurations than any other manufacturer. At a moment when the demands of time and the need for precision quality are leaving offshore suppliers at a competitive disadvantage, more of our customers are bringing us more business opportunities and we are converting more of them into sales.
That’s also because we spend a tremendous amount of time face to face with customers. I personally log thousands of miles, traveling to see our customers, and in the case of our distributors, often meeting with their customers. We educate and advise our customers, bringing them up to date on developments in the caster industry and frequently on ways they can improve their own productivity.
Getting back to the Iron Triangle concept, we are routinely delivering on quality, schedule and budget. Going from concept to drawings to tooling and final production can be done in six to eight weeks. We recently completed a custom order for 72,000 rigid and 72,000 swivel casters, going from concept to carton in 45 days. Every piece met our quality standards and our customer’s budget was left in tact. And that’s not a one-off. We are more frequently fulfilling those types of requirements.
It seems to me that in 2018, telling customers that we can only meet two of their three main requirements won’t work and isn’t the way we want to do business. Customers want it all – quality, schedule and budget – and we’re committed to giving it to them three out of three.