When Allen Witherspoon, general manager of GASCO Manufacturing, needed to write a quality manual to satisfy the requirements of one of his top customers, he had no idea where to start.

"I knew I couldn’t simply sit down and do it," says Witherspoon. "I didn’t have the time or the knowledge and I wasn’t sure where to begin."

Witherspoon turned to the New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership. "We’re not a complex company, but I gave the MEP project manager a tour of the entire GASCO facility to see exactly how we operate," explains Witherspoon.

The MEP project manager assessed GASCO’s entire process--sales, receiving raw materials, manufacturing and warehousing--before beginning work on the manual. "As a result of the new quality control manual, the company’s processes are now formally defined and documented, and we satisfied our customer’s requirements," says Witherspoon. "We have also hired a new employee to inspect received raw material and the final product. This new hire was a direct result of the now detailed and defined inspection activities documented in our new quality control manual."

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