QA One-Two Punch Wins
Tempe, AZ’s Total Quality Systems, Inc. Succeeds by Offering
a Combination of Equipment Sales and Inspection Services.Story by C. H. Bush, editorPhotos courtesy Total Quality Systems, Inc.
Not many businesses can increase sales 18% during one of the worst downturns in 30 years. But Todd Johnson, president and founder of Tempe, AZ’s Total Quality Systems, Inc., (TQS) started in 2000, has done just that. How? By offering customers a combination of quality inspection equipment sales and services.
“My attitude from day one, when I first started selling measuring equipment right out of college, was simple,” he says. “I put myself in the customers’ shoes. I asked myself, ‘What does the customer want? What does the customer need?’ If what they wanted or needed was in conflict with what I wanted, the customer won. In my view, that’s the secret to success in any kind of business.”
Right from the beginning Johnson says he saw a real opportunity in the inspection services business.
“As I traveled the western states, what I saw was that customers sending out parts for inspection all wanted and expected good data,” he says, “but they also wanted and needed something else—fast delivery at fair prices.”
“A lot of the inspection houses were offering two-to-three-week delivery, even on small quantities,” he recalls. “So I said, ‘Okay, if I can provide quick turnaround, that at least might get us in the door.’ So, I tried it and it worked. The people I approached were used to waiting sometimes up to a month to get their data back. I went to them and said, ‘If you gave your work to me, what would you want done differently?’ They said, ‘Good data and fast turnaround. Give us faster deliveries and we’ll give you a shot.’ So, that’s what I’ve offered ever since.”
Today, Johnson’s company, which employs 5 people and occupies a clean, modern, 3,000-sq-ft space in Tempe, has won an enviable niche in the metalworking industry.
Customer’s Have It Their Way
Total Quality Systems revenues are divided about 50-50 between equipment sales and subcontract inspection services.
“What makes us different, I think, is that we offer both inspection equipment and service,” Johnson says. “I have exclusive Zeiss territories for the Rocky Mountain region from Mexico to Canada. We mainly concentrate on Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado. We also go up into Idaho, and some in Montana. We sell Zeiss CMMs, surface finish inspection and roundness equipment and Ram optical vision systems. We put our demonstration machines to work providing inspection services for our customers. It would be foolish to let them sit around gathering dust. Our inspection services really don’t have a territorial limit. If the customer can ship it, we can inspect it. We have a lot of customers in California.”
Johnson’s customers come mainly from the aerospace, medical, semi-conductor and manufacturing industries. Even with this diversity, he says he “crawls into his customers’ shoes.”
“Because we offer both equipment sales and inspection service, we’re often able to help our customers decide on the right solution for their needs,” he says. “For instance, a customer might come to us looking to buy a piece of equipment, but after some discussion, we realize they don’t have enough in-house work to justify the expense.
So, we might offer our inspection services to them as a lower-cost
alternative. Some-times they’ll do this until their volume increases
enough to justify the equipment. On the other hand, we may see that
they do have the volume, and recommend the right type of machine for
their needs. As I said, we put ourselves in our customers shoes and
try to do what is best for them. So far, this attitude has been very
successful for us.”In addition to good data and fast turnaround, Johnson’s customers want service they can trust.
“We realized that credibility is very important, too,” he says, “so we went through the process and expense to become ISO 9001, 2008 certified. This is important, especially to our out-of-state customers, since the ISO certification means they don’t have to travel here to audit us. The ISO certification does it for them and gives them peace of mind.”
Total Quality Systems offers CMM, roundness, surface finish and vision inspection services.
“Right from the start I’ve made sure we were selling and using the best equipment available on the market,” he says. “With our automated Zeiss CMM machines we easily handle critical dimensions with tolerances to .0001 inches. We can inspect complex shapes and then compare the results to a solid model furnished by our customer. This ability to inspect TQS, Inc. owner-founder Todd Johnson shows off a casting of a missile housing inspected by his company. complex shapes with very critical dimensioning has resulted in a lot of our growth.”
The Real Cost of Equipment
People who think the real cost of buying inspection equipment is the selling price are in for a surprise, Johnson says. “The cost of the ownership of a machine is not the purchase order amount,” he explains. “It’s a combination of costs, including the purchase price, the cost of training time, the time required to write programs. All those costs can far outweigh the cost of the initial price of the equipment.”
According to Johnson, training is one of the most important things a shop should consider when buying a new piece of inspection equipment.
“You can buy the best machine out there,” he says, “but if nobody knows how to use it, you’ve wasted a lot of your investment. What training can do is allow you to start using the equipment right away so you can get your return on in-vestment as quickly as possible.”
Many shops buy CMMs and then hire operators who say they know how to operate the machine.
“But that may not be quite true,” Johnson says. “The operator may know how to turn on the machine and set up a part on the table, but there’s a good chance he doesn’t know how to write programs. Suddenly a part comes in that requires a complex program and the operator draws a blank.”
Each machine Johnson sells has a certain amount of training built into the cost.
“Training does come with the machines we sell,” he says.
“The customer can go to a Zeiss classroom facility in California for training or they can purchase personalized, on-site training for a small additional cost. We sell our training ser-vices virtually at cost to help our customers.”
Customers who have used TQS’s inspection services prior to buying a machine get an extra bonus from the company.
“In order to inspect their parts, we first have to write the programs to run the machines,” Johnson says. “When they buy a machine from us, we give them those programs. That gets them up and running really fast, even with a less-than-experienced operator.”
Products Offered
At present TQS, Inc. offers a pretty hefty package of in-spection
equipment and services to its customers.“We sell and use the Contura G2 CMM and the ScanMax CMM, used mainly by the aerospace and molding industries,” he says. “We also sell and use the Zeiss Surfcom for surface finish measuring and a Zeiss Roundcom for form and cylindricity and roundness. For very small or flexible parts that can’t handle a touch probe, we sell Ram optical vision systems. Next month we’ll have the Zeiss DuraMax, which is the shop hardened Zeiss CMM for use on the shop floor. We try very hard to stay abreast of the latest equipment.”
The Future
Johnson says he thought the recession might have caused an increase in his sales.
“When times are good and things are busy, everybody is busy,” he says. “The thing that I missed, that I didn’t calculate correctly was that I thought we might see an increase in our inspection services when things got slower. I thought some of the companies would lay off some of their workers to cut costs, but that just didn’t happen. Instead, they have pulled back some of the work they were giving us and keeping it in-house to keep their employees busy. We’re actually glad to see that, because once you lose a good CMM operator, he or she can be pretty hard to replace. Our inspection services sales have increased mainly because of the industries we serve. The military, aerospace and medical industries are all busy, which is good for us. Hopefully this recession will end soon, and everyone can get back to work.”
