Blue-Chip Precision Engineering Manufacturer in Devon, UK 

Client Requirements

Employed by a blue-chip precision engineering manufacturer as a Division Quality and EHS Manager, one of the major tasks I had to do was to increase customer satisfaction and mitigate health and safety risks.

The task was to proactively reduce the quality and safety risks in the processes before they turned into issues and make them more robust rather than looking at customer complaints and incidents and accidents reactively. Take care of the process, and the process will take care of itself.

Approach

In the investigation phase, we created a vision to minimize quality and health and safety risks by 100% over a period of 8 months. The selected problem-solving technique was the A3 methodology. The methodology starts with having a sponsor and an owner and formulating a multifunctional team. When the project organisation was established, a good problem statement occurred.

A good problem statement means that the problem is 50% solved because everyone understands what needs to be done. In the grasping, the situation phase key process performance data was collected and analysed and turned into good understanding. Then various root cause analysis techniques were deployed, such as the Ishikawa diagram, 5 why analysis.

In the next phase, actions were recommended by the multifunctional teams. To get maximum impact in the shortest possible time low hanging fruit matrix was used to prioritize actions. In the action planning phase, action owners were identified and asked for their support.

The Proposed Solution

One of the major actions proposed for both quality and health and safety performance improvement is to develop a quality and further develop a health and safety near-miss reporting system.

Near-miss is a well-known definition in health and safety, however, in quality terms, this is pretty unique. The solution was to design a quality near-miss system and implement it.

On the health and safety side, the system was already in place. The challenge was how to re-energize it. We designed a communication campaign that included various types of communications from the weekly safety message through health and safety toolbox talks and recruitment of health and safety star point owners. The health and safety star point owners were recruited voluntarily for each natural working cell. Their task was to spread the message about near-miss reporting.

On the quality front, I had to oversee the implementation of a quality near-miss reporting system. That included recruiting quality star point owners to support the system. And the bedding in again voluntarily. After 6 months of operating the system, the client was able to reduce the number of external customer complaints by 41% and the number of internal customer complaints by 39%.

On the health and safety side, the number of near-misses was raised by 64%, resulting in a 0.5 recordable accident rate per average number of employees (rolling 12 months' measurement). That is considered world-class.

Client Statement

Instrumentation Sales Manager commented for the client (Source: LinkedIn):

“I wrote this recommendation for Balazs Bagi when he was working for Parker Hannifin Manufacturing Ltd as a Division QEHS Manager. At that time, I was a key account manager for the Corporation's Italian Sales Company and could rely on Balazs's excellent support with regards to customer quality complaints. He was always there for me when I needed him even if it was out of office hours.

His communication skills and professionalism helped a lot not only to turn sticky situations around but to emerge from them even stronger, which is a pretty unique skill set. My customers were also very happy with his performance. When I had to submit sales bids Balazs was again there for me to ensure that any quality related documentation was ready to send to the customer on time.

I strongly recommend him and wish him good luck with his new venture. I was sad to see him leaving however can understand his ambitions and I am sure that he will be very successful running his own company and satisfying customers as it is his second nature.

I was sad to see him leaving however can understand his ambitions and I am sure that he will be very successful running his own company and satisfying customers as it is his second nature.”