Honoring excellence: improving businesses improve Indiana. Winners of the BKD Indiana Excellence Awards for 2006.

• Position: TASUS Corp.

AN OCTOBER SNOWSTORM in Buffalo helped illustrate just what a team effort quality is at TASUS Corp. of Bloomington. Company executives were due at the BKD Indiana Excellence Awards luncheon in Indianapolis, but were stranded by the snow. So the company's receptionist took to the stage to give a speech accepting the gold award in the small-manufacturing category, then returned to accept the overall BKD Indiana Excellence Award for 2006.

And that couldn't have been more fitting, says one of the executives who was stuck in Buffalo, general manager Mike Schab. That's because the company's receptionist has also been a key player in the effort to launch the Toyota Production System at the manufacturer of plastic auto parts, a project that earned TASUS this year's highest honors. "She's our receptionist, but she's also our TPS trainer on teamwork and leadership," he says.

The case of the multitalented receptionist is a great illustration of a key tenet of the Toyota system, he says:

"The greatest form of waste is unused employee productivity," or in this case, talent. The TPS program gave this employee an opportunity to explore and develop a skill in employee training.

By fully adopting Toyota's system, TASUS tackled quality issues that had been building as the company grew, according to Schab and human resources director Mark Anderson. For one major customer, the rate of defective parts per million had hit 2,600, but dropped to just three after the system was implemented. The company's cost of quality has been cut in half, and response time on customer quality complaints has become much faster. "We've seen a tremendous improvement in our quality," Anderson says. "Our employee morale has really increased, and our turnover has decreased tremendously.

"The savings and benefits are huge," says TASUS president Melanie Hart, who says employees have examined and improved a wide range of processes, videotaping and carefully analyzing them to identify waste and other potential trouble spots. Not only are processes greatly improved, but the exercise of making the improvements is an excellent teambuilding experience. "It's how you lead people and develop them into a truly cohesive workforce."

SGI, an Indianapolis third-party fulfillment and distribution company, earned the silver award in the small-manufacturing category The company wanted to bake excellence into the corporate culture, aiming to communicate a consistent message of excellence to employees and improve the performance-appraisal process. Its plan, known as "The SGI Way," includes carefully articulated standards and expectations, a new performance-review system called "Catalytic Coaching" and an improved employee survey process. The result has been improved customer and employee satisfaction, a reduction in corrective-action reports from clients, higher profits per employee and long-term contracts from major customers. The company also has received a number of awards from clients and trade groups.

The bronze award in the small-manufacturing category went to medical-device maker Polymer Technology Systems of Indianapolis, which sought to upgrade its processes and quality system to help it expand globally in a heavily regulated field. Its plan included the hiring of a quality manager and other supporting personnel, along with departmental reorganization. The company revamped its facility to achieve a more efficient layout and workflow, and it rebuilt its quality system into a more user-friendly format. The results have shown up on the bottom line. Gross margins more than doubled between 2003 and 2005, and profits in 2005 were up by a million dollars over 2004. The company has been able to crack new foreign markets and achieve faster product approval.

MANUFACTURING--LARGE

The gold award in this category went to PTS Corp., an electronics repair company headquartered in Bloomington that competes in the ever-changing wireless phone industry. "One of our challenges in cell phones is very high labor costs and very high equipment costs," says Mick Craig, vice president, general manager and co-owner of the company.

Last year, the firm founded in 1967 to repair TV tuners determined that a large investment in capital, human resources and facilities would be required to gain wireless market share and continue the company's growth. In order to minimize the impact, the company's engineers were able to design their own repair testing equipment. "It basically cut our equipment needs in half," Craig says. "We were able to double capacity"

The result: capital expenditure savings of $850,000 and labor savings of $1.6 million. The projects laid the foundation for continued significant increases in 2006 sales.

Outsourcing in the automotive manufacturing industry provided new opportunities for silver winner Kern Krest, an Elkhart warehousing, distribution and fulfillment operation focusing on chemicals. In 2005, the company...