Last year I had the good fortune of doing some consulting with B&C Specialty Products in Hopeulikit, Georgia. B&C does light manufacturing, primarily plastic molding and assembly, and they also distribute imported products produced by companies in the Far East. They have about 150 employees and are the biggest employer by far in Hopeulikit.

B&C was a perfect place to learn about managing and quality. Every day presented a new lesson. Usually the lessons were hard-learned, and those are the ones that really stick with you. B&C was gracious enough to allow me to interview their personnel about issues that arose and events that occurred during my time there. Here is one of those lessons: Train your employees in problem solving. The scenario is described by the people who actually lived it.

—Paolo Ferrari, manager of quality and logistics
"We’re making good progress in problem solving. That’s one of the efforts I established when I got hired into this job. God knows we have enough problems, so it’s important we try to deal with them. Our process isn’t perfect, but at least we’re trying to apply discipline and involve people in the process.

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