WAUKEGAN, ILL. (April 23, 2008) – It’s one thing to be recognized as a quality leader by your peers. It’s quite another thing to be ranked among the top five companies for quality. But that’s precisely where Yaskawa Electric America, a world leader in the manufacture of adjustable frequency drives, servomotors, motion control and robotics, found itself after receiving notification from Quality Magazine that it earned top honors in the publication’s annual Quality Leadership 100 Survey.

“We’ve always considered ourselves a bit obsessive about quality,” said Craig Espevik, vice president of operations for Yaskawa Electric America. “Being honored as one of the top five companies certainly makes the stringent quality processes we’ve put in place all worth it.”

Eight hundred companies participated in the survey. They were rated on criteria such as scrap and rework percentage of sales, warranty costs as percentage of sales, rejected parts per million shipped, contribution of quality to profitability and shareholder value.

While in theory most companies strive for quality, maintaining a consistently high quality track record year after year is something only an elite few, like Yaskawa, can maintain.

“We’ve worked hard to uphold the lowest adjustable frequency drive failure rate in the industry,” said Espevik. “Much of our success in becoming a quality leader comes from our company’s Japanese roots, where quality improvement philosophies such as kaizen are stressed. We’ve managed to take decades of experience, benchmarking, customer input and industry research and apply it to new production and distribution technologies to ensure we achieve the reliability objectives our customers demand.”

Espevik added: “Our Quality Management System is fully integrated into every business system we employ. And the Operations ‘kaizen’ culture ensures that our associates receive a minimum of 40 hours annually in quality training. We’re continuously adjusting to ensure quality results.”

As noted by Quality Magazine, all phases of Yaskawa’s business—including research and development, supply chain management, production and quality control, sales and marketing as well as technical service and distribution – are committed to delivering top quality products and service. One example of this commitment is Yaskawa’s acceptance into the ISO 9001: 2000 family of certified organizations.

Yaskawa’s obsession with reliability is what drives its design. In fact, manufacturing processes are carefully designed to prevent defects. Production operators have paperless online resources at their workstations, which result in highly detailed and up-to-date work instructions for every process step. Complex assemblies are made simple with the use of animations and video. Therefore, all components are verified and approved before they are installed, and frequent in-process quality checks prevent a unit from moving down the line until quality is assured. Furthermore, every adjustable frequency drive goes through a functional test with over 100 tests/checks performed.

Beyond kaizen, quality practices employed by Yaskawa include total quality management, certified vendor program and product certification process.

Companies participating in the Quality Leadership 100 Survey were also evaluated on: the number of quality programs in place; registration to various standards; percentage of employees dedicated to quality responsibilities; average number of hours monthly that employees receive quality training; and the role quality professionals play in the acquisition of test, measurement and inspection tools, software and services.

View Quality Leadership 100 Reprint - Quality Magazine (March 2008 Issue)