Being a business, GRS Sign Company Ltd., has to consider a variety of options when conducting every day operations. Primary among those are the financial options, of course. Businesses wouldn’t do well by losing money all the time, so the primary purpose is of course, to make money. At the end of the day after paying employees, paying bills, and taking in money for jobs, it is ultimately the aim to have some money left over.

That seems pretty straightforward, I’d say.

The last year has been a bit shaky in the financial markets, and to be fair it’s not really getting any better. Prices are steadily rising, not just of our raw materials but for everything: taxes, food, clothes, mortgages etc., Some affect the business, some don’t. Indirectly of course, they all do – the employees have to factor in food, clothes and so on, whereas the company (directly) wouldn’t have to.

Some businesses expect you to maintain the lowest price possible, some even complain when you raise prices a little to counter the effects of rising prices, but most are in the same boat.

Every cycle (which we should add seems to come round faster and faster) we have an external audit.

This isn’t for any one thing, but rather for the BS5750 standard (ISO 9000) which GRS Sign Company Ltd. signed up for (excuse the pun) in 1993. It is a system of quality assurance that we believe needs living up to. All of our internal systems, our processes, our production, all live up to this standard, and follows the system to the letter.

The auditor picks areas to take a look at each year, never the same each time, and examines them for our compliancy to the standard. From a personal perspective, these are some factors that I encounter daily, that are highlighted in the ISO 9000 standards, which I will add pieces to show how it affects my daily work. These are just some of the requirements:

• a set of procedures that cover all key processes in the business; we have procedures laid out in manuals for us to follow and refer to, for both small and large jobs;
• monitoring processes to ensure they are effective; we have been asked to write out processes to make sure we know what they are, and are also encouraged to suggest improvements;
• keeping adequate records; each step of the work we do has an area to tick and mark that we have done it, our signature, any extra info etc.,
• checking output for defects, with appropriate and corrective action where necessary; we have a procedure for marking mistakes we find or make;
• regularly reviewing individual processes and the quality system itself for effectiveness;
• facilitating continual improvement; again, we are encouraged to suggest improvements to any procedure;

Going back those many years to 1993, the BS5750 standard, or what is now known as the ISO 9000 standard, wasn’t as well appreciated as it is now. It was quite a leap for a small company such as GRS to embrace the standards, and quite difficult to justify doing so, but ultimately it can be said that the standards have had visible tangible dividends for us.

Back to current days, GRS Sign Company Ltd., passed the audit with flying colours and while we are happy to say our standards are high and the employees are well trained in following them, it is wise to also say that like any standards they could be higher and we will aim for that.

How much time exactly is wasted in meetings that achieve little or nothing?

What manager’s time would not be better used monitoring manufacturing, or employees in action, or some other function that they normally do? Does it take a general meeting of managers to decide whether a car can be washed, or if new thumbtacks need ordering? Difficult choices are usually left up to senior managers anyway, so why have a committee meeting to agree on what (s)he already decided?

This kind of time management is essential to a small business where time is critical. It might be less important in larger organisations, but even so, time is money, so the saying goes.