If you’re like most business-to-business (B2B) suppliers, you’re probably making certain predictable mistakes that can greatly affect your ability to compete. Unless your company has smarter employees, some inherent unassailable advantage, or a markedly different approach to satisfying customers, those competitors always seem to throttle your growth. But what if you and your competitors were committing some serious mistakes that stunt organic growth—and you corrected them? Wouldn’t that be enough to propel you to the front of the line?

Reishauer AG is a company with a long tradition in the gear industry. Reishauer’s products range from tooth profile grinding machines, to diamond and CBN tools, which the company exports to industrial states throughout the world. Teeth on gears with a diameter of 150 mm to 1,000 mm are given their final super-accurate grind on Reishauer’s highly precise machines, therefore it is critical that the inner workings of Reishauer’s grinding machines run as smooth as clockwork.

When your customers’ lives depend on your products, you take extra care in manufacturing each piece.

That’s one reason AO Precision Manufacturing LLC of Daytona Beach, Florida, pays so much attention to quality, says president Stephen Koch.

Measuring the sharp edges of cutting tools is a challenging process, because it involves a small radius, which requires high lateral resolution and high angles. It is also important to be able to measure a diverse range of heights. The study becomes more difficult when the surface has chipping or other types of deformation. Precision cutting tools generally require a sharp tool edge with radii of several tens of nanometers or even smaller.

In the early 1970s I was a young teenager who was completely caught up in the Zeitgeist. I admired the long-haired rebels and radicals who were engaged in protesting the establishment and developing the counter-culture. I didn’t really know what any of that meant, but to me it was all about empowering youth and declaring our independence from the adults—my parents in particular. 

The first thing you need to do when you are evaluating a potential supplier based on their ISO 9001 certificate is request that they provide you with a copy of the certificate itself. If the company is indeed certified, they shouldn't have a problem providing you with a copy of their certificate.  When you have it, then you can make the following checks:

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During annual strategy meetings managers use all kinds of statistics, projections, charts, and graphs to support and defend their plans for the upcoming year. Culture, the single biggest determinant in the success or failure of a manager’s plans, rarely, if ever, makes it onto the agenda. Defining a company’s culture and changing it to serve the business is the surest way to ensure plans succeed. Ignoring the impact of culture greatly increases the risk of failure.