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South Dakota Company Invests in Its Team and Processes
With the help of: South Dakota Manufacturing and Technology Solutions
About
Quality Quick Print, better known as QQP, began as a quick printer in the 1980s and became a commercial quick printer in the 1990s. The company's services have since expanded to include printing, signage, apparel, and engraving. QQP produces everything from brochures and business cards to banners and signs, polos and jackets, awards and drinkware, and much more.
QQP is part of the Midstates Group, a diversified family of brands that includes Midstates Group, Midstates Connect, Fulfillment by Midstates, Quality Quick Print, and Panther Graphics.
Based in Aberdeen, SD, Midstates operates an 180,000-square-foot facility, enabling them to serve companies nationwide with speed and precision, combining the scale of a national provider with the care and character of a hometown family partner.
The Challenge
QQP is guided by its core values:
- Unwavering Service Commitment: To our customers, each other, and our partners
- Bring the Passion: Love what you do, be thriving and happy
- Community Stewardship: Give back personally and professionally
To ensure that QQP maintained its high level of service and commitment to its core values, they contacted SD Manufacturing and Technology Solutions (MTS) to help evaluate their processes and increase cohesiveness within their team.
Quality Quick Print procured the services of MTS this last year to help us address streamlining workflow processing in our sign manufacturing division. With the help of MTS, we were able to identify some key bottlenecks in the flow of communication through our current core processes and SOPs. Utilizing a cross-functional team and the 6 Types of Working Genius, we assembled a team of employees touching all key departments responsible for processing the workload.
Through value stream mapping and a well-complementary team of Geniuses, we identified issues, created solutions, tested, modified, and rewrote processes, SOPs, and job descriptions to increase the accuracy and clarity of communication within the departments processing the workload. The team at QQP took this exercise and then identified improvements, and also implemented them into the other service offerings we provide. Overall job satisfaction among the team members, increased throughput efficiency, and ultimately faster, more accurate manufacturing were all gained through these two exercises. QQP has continued to utilize the 6 Types of Working Genius to assemble teams of complementary people to tackle the “unsolvable issues” that leadership has identified.
During our time spent with SMTS, we were exposed to many of the concepts of Lean Manufacturing, sparking a desire from the leadership team to move forward with future continued training and development of Lean Manufacturing utilizing MTS. I appreciate the consultative and challenging experience MTS Business Advisor, Stuart Giere, and his team brought to the exercises, truly challenging our team to identify core areas of improvement while helping the team navigate how to have healthy conflict and solution-based discussions by guiding the conversations through effective team exercises.
MEP's Role
To do this, MTS facilitated a Value Stream Mapping project to examine QQP's processes and develop a plan for improvement.
To increase the success of the recommendations from the VSM project, QQP also brought in MTS to help the QQP team understand how to work more effectively. To do this, MTS Business Advisor Stuart Giere employed the Six Types of Working Genius program, for which he is a certified facilitator. Through individual assessments and team sessions, including the executive team, the whole QQP team was able to better align their activities and work more productively by understanding their own "geniuses, competencies, and frustrations," thereby increasing productivity and job satisfaction and decreasing burnout among its team.