If you subscribe to Quality, it seems safe to assume that quality is a priority for you. But even when it is a priority, achieving high levels of quality is an ongoing challenge that requires effort from every member of the organization every day.

The Quality Leadership 100 recognizes companies that have accepted­ this challenge and been successful in their efforts.

This annual survey for Quality ranks companies on the following factors: continuous improvement and internal quality programs; contribution of quality to profitability and shareholder value; average number of hours that employees receive quality training; scrap and rework as a percentage of sales; warranty costs as a percentage of sales; and registration to various standards such as ISO 9001.

Congratulations to all those who were recognized on our list. And now, without further ado, let’s take a look at the top companies.

Skip straight to the survey results here.

Alek Industries

Beavercreek, OH

When 95% of your work involves the military, it is clear that quality must be a priority. Scott Morr, the quality manager of Alek Industries, knows that the quality system is going well because customers have told them.

Alek Industries, a small business prime military contractor that manufactures mechanical, electronic and electro-mechanical assemblies, has received 100% satisfaction rankings from customers such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and the Department of Defense.

As a small manufacturer that works with larger OEMs, the 17 employees at Alek take quality seriously. In the eight years that Morr has been with the company, he’s presided over a lot of changes in the quality department. The company has moved from the previous ISO standard to AS9100 certification, completed many Lockheed Martin quality audits, and updated quality processes along the way. Now quality is broken out into 31 operating procedures. While the attention to quality never changes, the products they are manufacturing change all the time. As a job shop, each new contract involves a quality plan and review. In addition, the company’s quality policy focuses on customer satisfaction, continual improvement, and training. The company trains new employees, implements cross training and offers refresher courses every year to every employee.

“I’m proud of our quality program,” Morr says. “From all of our customers, we’ve gotten a 100% quality rating, Lockheed, Boeing and even with the government, we’ve achieved this in the last few years.”

For other companies looking to improve quality—and perhaps impress military customers—Morr offers this advice: “Pay attention to your product, contract or purchase order reviews. A lot of things we have in place for quality have really helped us out. That’s where we catch a lot of issues that might affect the quality plan.” As he noted, failing to address issues in the beginning can create a lot of problems down the road.

Tecnova Electronics Inc.

Waukegan, IL

Quality manager Scott Martin took a risk joining Tecnova eleven years ago. He moved from southern Illinois to an area outside Chicago to join the then-35 person company. Today the certified electronic contract manufacturer has about 120 people, and continues to expand. The company specializes in building complex electronic assemblies for commercial and industrial applications.

Sharp-eyed readers of Quality may remember hearing about Tecnova in 2014 when the company made the top five list of the Quality Leadership 100. Since then the company has expanded the building, adding 20,000 square feet last January, driven by customer demand. In addition, they transitioned to the current ISO 2015 standard, expanded the staff with more engineers and quality staff. “Basically just bigger and better,” says Terence Coleman Jr., Tecnova’s COO.

Tecnova has a large engineering team of more than 20 engineers and technicians that can build fixtures and simulate real world conditions. The company invests heavily in training its manufacturing staff, with a dedicated training center as well as ongoing training with a refresher class every year.

The founder’s vision included a focus on quality besides building a quality product, offering suggestions to improve it to the client. The company uses a combination of different quality programs, including lean and 5S, in an effort to enhance the inspection capabilities.

Terence Coleman Jr. was nine when his father founded the engineering services company, and his father is still involved in the business every day. “His focus on attention to detail and quality has driven our success,” Coleman says.

But Coleman emphasizes that the entire team deserves recognition for their attention to quality, product longevity and customer satisfaction.

James Demar, director of business development, says the company gets a lot of referral business. By developing partnerships with other companies, they’ve been able to increase their business. Demar says, “My job is to make sure we’re not a well-kept secret.”

Orion Technologies

Orlando, FL

Orion Technologies specializes in embedded single board computers (SBC) for industrial, military, and commercial applications, guiding customers from initial business inquiry through board development and design all the way to shipment of the final product. The nearly 30-year-old company also specializes in quality, with an AS9100 certification for quality assurance through every step of their process.

“We have a quality-first culture,” says Olatokunbo Olaniyan, the quality assurance manager at Orion. Though only two Orion employees have the word “quality” in their title, any worker can identify a nonconformance, Olaniyan says, and all embrace the quality mindset. “I’ve worked for different companies where people are always looking for ways to circumvent quality processes,” he notes—to save time or cut corners—“but it’s definitely not like that here.”

Each Orion employee is trained to a quality management system, with metrics in place for key processes and data analysis at the end of each month for on-time delivery, quality rating, and design effectiveness. Through this model, Olaniyan says, “each employee strives to keep improving and moving forward from a quality standpoint.”

Furthermore, each Orion product is designed and built with a specific test plan, developed by Orion’s own hardware engineers and software developers, to analyze the quality and reliability of each component before the product is shipped. For systems that will be subjected to harsh environments, Orion uses burn-in testing to weed out marginal components, keeping failure rates low and SBC performance high.

Geometric Design & Technology

Meadville, PA

The four equal partners of Geometric Design and Technology have a combined 80 years of experience in metrology fields, resulting in a A2LA accredited metrology lab that epitomizes quality.

According to their website, GD&T specializes in dimensional inspection of parts via precise 3D measurement, using calibrated equipment that is traceable to NIST. The environmentally-controlled lab, which houses contact and noncontact dimensional inspection equipment, offers first article inspection, reverse engineering with SolidWorks CAD software, and turnkey inspection packages that can be tailored to fit customers’ most complex dimensional fixturing, gaging, and programming needs. Additional quality services on offer include gage repeatability studies, PPAP, and SPC.

As the website also notes, customers across industries like medical, automotive, electronics, and plastics outsource their dimensional inspection to GD&T in no small part because of the lab’s accreditation and proven track record of quality assurance. In essence, these customers know that GD&T will satisfy their in-house requirements with utmost precision, while also providing a cost-effective solution with a quick turnaround.

Turner-Industries

Baton Rouge, LA

Turner Industries employees build, maintain and service the nation’s heavy industrial sector helping make the life we live possible by supporting the companies that produce fuel, energy, and products essential to our daily existence. Since 1961, Turner has steadily worked to provide one solution for its clients’ success. To do this it finds, develops and supports the very best people for the jobs it performs throughout its four divisions: construction; maintenance and turnarounds; fabrication; and equipment and specialty services.

According to Roland M. Toups, executive chairman of Turner Industries, the company’s goal is to provide clients with services that allows them to be the best and deliver results that have bottom-line impact. “Our strategic initiatives are simple,” he says, “assist our clients in achieving their business objectives, produce bottom-line results by working smarter and faster, and deliver innovative solutions to strengthen our clients’ competitive advantage.”

Turner Industries also has been named in the 2018 Engineering-News Record (ENR) Rankings, No. 31 on its list of the Top 400 Contractors and No. 119 on its 250 Top Global Contractors.

Survey Results