Aircraft Components Mfg.

Industry

Aerospace

Size

500 employees

Expertise

Sales Effectiveness & Operational Improvement

Assignment

The Company was responding to a large number of quote requests, but was not successful in turning the quotes into orders. The organization was slow turning around quotes and discovered that in many instances customers were making purchase decisions before the Company was able to respond with their quote. They were losing to competitors who had higher prices and longer delivery times due to their own inefficiency in responding to client requests for proposals.

Actions

MainStream assessed the Company's quotation process and found lengthy delays caused by isolated departmental “fiefdoms”. Each department focused on its own day-to-day problems with insufficient consideration given to an efficient, highly coordinated process for responding to quotes.

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MainStream engaged various departments in a manner that allowed them to understand the need for reducing the quote process time to increase sales. A cross-departmental Business Process Improvement team was formed to map the current state of the quote process. Once completed, MainStream created a walk-through process to determine the factors interfering with a quick response to RFQs. Working with the team, MainStream identified obstacles and made recommendations on operational improvement processes to reduce time and keep the processes moving toward completion in a timely manner.

Results

After testing several variations of possible processes, the team implemented a process that met each department’s individual concerns but also met the Company objective for response time. Overall, the response time for RFQs was reduced by 75%. Errors associated with the quotes - another problem identified during the mapping process - decreased by 95%. The sales effectiveness of the organization increased by 50%.