More Good News for Lister Customers

Lister Trade Frames have just released more results underlining why they were winners of the G-12 Fabricator of the Year Award for the third time in 2012.

Listers have monitored their cost of sales as a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for more than 8 years now and have used the results to scrutinize and help drive down costs in the company. We all know that mistakes, if unchecked, can drastically affect the bottom line of a business, but they can also have other more serious effects; like driving away customers.

Monitoring, scrutinizing and target-setting have helped Listers to reduce their mistakes and improve their quality over the years but 2012 saw them take a huge leap forward in this area.

Back in 2006 Listers showed a KPI of just 0.68% of sales, with mistakes costing them around £35,000. 2012 saw Listers reporting only 0.12% KPI for cost of quality meaning that their mistakes cost them just £9000 on a windows turnover of £7.6Million. The new figures show an improvement of 80% or some £35,000.

Phil Warren, Listers’ Sales Director said, “We pride ourselves on our service and the ability to meet the expectations of our customer base but it would be naïve to assume that we are perfect. We make mistakes as well, but we work hard to keep them to an absolute minimum.”

It’s true that every company makes mistakes but having a proactive approach to reducing errors means that customers get a better service and waste less time on site and that adds up to better performance all-round.

“What makes us incredibly proud of the 2012 performance is the fact that the mistakes have reduced even though our product output and complexity has increased hugely,” said Phil. “For the past six years we have kept the figure small, but last year saw us reduce it to an all time record low!”

Listers figures in 2012 for delivery to customers, On Time in Full, was another success at a staggering 99.5% resulting from strict monitoring and their staff working on constant improvement processes.

“From the moment the order is taken by our sales team to the second we deliver to the customer, there isn’t one part of the process that hasn’t been recorded, assessed and scrutinised,” said Phil “our team are focused on constantly giving better customer service and that’s why we have been able to improve year on year.”

Monitoring and involving staff in constant improvement may not be easy to do, but Listers results clearly demonstrate the benefits. The end result is a happier and more loyal customer who can trust in their supplier.

Ultimately, producing quality first time round means that customers spend less time on site, less time dealing with the end users complaints and it provides a more profitable and easier life for the installer and the manufacturer. That’s all good news for customers.