“The IMEC staff was extremely helpful in moving things forward for us. They challenged what we are undertaking internally and gave us direction to progress through improvements. The third party integration as well as the ability to buffer and provide non-biased opinions has been most beneficial.”Todd BringuetContinuous Improvement Manager - Ace Sign Co.
Situation
Ace Sign Co. had experienced strong growth in their core markets and had begun developing plans for expansion of their products and services nationwide. With a vision in mind, but an unclear path to success, the Ace Sign Co. leadership met with IMEC to begin mapping the journey. The Promoting Business Excellence (PROBE) benchmark assessment gave them a chance to dig into strategic areas of their business and identify key strengths and opportunities for improvement.
IMEC Solution
Ace Sign Co. worked with the IMEC team to complete the PROBE assessment and identified four areas of concentration: develop and share a vision and strategy for the entire business, emphasize results for customers through quality and measurement, standardize approaches for developing people, and manage knowledge to release innovation and improve execution. “For us the PROBE assessment established a great foundation for a common understanding of our goals,” said Todd Bringuet, Manager of Continuous Improvement. “The core structure is building right now, but we’re in a good position to tackle the new initiatives.”
By focusing on the new initiatives the team felt they had an opportunity to embark on a pace-setting project. The company has begun the three-year strategic planning project and has leveraged their initial PROBE assessment results as a way to bring more clarity to the overall plan. “It’s a process of continuous improvement,” said Bringuet. “While we know we need more clarity in the plan, we’ve been executing a lot of core things at the same pace.” The organization is seeing a lot of positive forward movement and has demonstrated the value of getting the entire team of the same page.
Results
- Increased capital spending
- Created 3 new jobs
- Developed an organizational mission statement, vision, and core values
- Provided better documentation and team understanding of the company’s strategy