Managing Excellence and a Prosperous Future

It is election season and here in the US we’re all about picking the right person for the job.  One group has a vision of a fixed-size pie and work hard to adjust the size of the pieces and distribute them.  Some, and we include Applied Process in this lot, envision a growing pie with enough for all, where less attention is paid to the individual pieces and more attention is paid to building a bigger pie.  You have a clear choice this November.  Exercise it.

So, speaking of picking the right person for the job, with this blog I am pleased to announce that AP’s COO, John Wagner, will add the title President to his business card.  John, a former Marine, with a sheepskin from the University of Wisconsin and decades of heat treat experience will  now lead the heat treat industry’s A-Team (or should I say AP Team?).  I will support John and his team as Chairman (and executive middle-linebacker).  We’re loaded for bear, having expanded our capacity by 50% in the past 18 months we’re all about growing the pie for Austempering.

 Some heat treaters are great vendors.  They wait patiently to take orders for existing business and compete aggressively to continually increase their share of the existing business.  At AP we grow the pie.  If you’ve got a six-piece steel weldment, we’ll help you convert it to a one-piece ADI casting.  If those fat aluminum structural components are costing you a bundle, perhaps we can replace them at equal weight with thin-walled ADI castings.  Troubles with imported ground-engaging parts.  We might be able to help you convert to CADI™.  Are you being torqued off with your carburized or induction hardened shafts?  Perhaps we can solve your long nightmare with Carbo-Austempering™.  Are you paying an arm and a leg to hog large parts out of steel bar stock?  Perhaps our Monster Parts™ furnace will allow us to replace that machining nightmare with a near net shape ADI casting.  We get paid to heat treat people’s parts.  But what we really do for a living is help our customers to replace one material/process combination with a better, faster, cheaper one.

 John Wagner and the AP A-Team stand ready to help you grow the pie.  Check ‘em out……and remember to vote for pie growth, not redistribution.

Applied Process' Customers ARE our focus.

Yes, you’ve heard that Applied Process’ mission is to “grow the pie”, and that’s true.  You’ve heard that we’re “passionate people providing innovative Austempering solutions”, and that’s true.  You may have also heard that we provide the highest quality Austempering services available ANYWHERE, on time and at competitive prices.  These define WHAT we do and, perhaps, HOW we do it, but WHY do we do those things?  It is because we are passionate about seeing our customers succeed and our success grows from theirs.

 Applied Process recently invited 16 people representing 10 customers to a one-day “customer advisory board”.  Now we all think we know what our customers need and want, but how often do we REALLY ask them?  How many requests do you get for surveys?  How many to you either throw in the trash or click out of?  So when 16 people give up their valuable time to give us unvarnished feedback we listen. This blog is not the place to go through all of their affirmation and critique, but we thank the participating customers for their full and honest feedback.  Suffice it to say that we have a clear picture of what our customers want more of, and what they could use less of.  Now it is our job to act to become continually better at meeting their needs.  Why?  Because our business comes from THEM.  If our objectives/strategies align with theirs then we can all work together to grow the pie profitably.

 Our Technical Sales Group Leader, Vasko Popovski, and our Executive Administrative Assistant, Cindy Duman, did a masterful job of arranging and executing the “customer advisory board” event and we’re certain it won’t be our last.  Hats off also to Nedra Sadorf of Hunter Business ( www.hunterbusiness.com ) for her masterful facilitation of the meeting.

 Why do we do what we do?  Because what we do is help our customers create new opportunities to make things better, faster, cheaper and more sustainably.  And by making them successful, we become successful.  They want more of that….and we’re prepared to give it.