Customers are important, they are our next week’s wages, but do you ever get customers who come in and demand an instant quotation. Never seen them before, probably never see them again but we must stop looking after our long term, good paying clients to get this quick quote done now.

Usually quick quotes have little information to work on and as such can not be a quote and must by definition be an estimate of the work likely to be involved.

Good customers are those who are regular, pay regularly, plan ahead and allow time to get a quote and discuss their full requirements. These are the customers who get best value, receive what they require and go home feeling satisfied.

Most people assume that when you make signs, that that’s all you do. We go that extra mile however - we do perform other sign-related services that can make a big difference. Here’s an example:

The sign is nearly ruined as you can see, the sprayed on lettering covering the sign. Perhaps a new sign would be in order? Not necessarily! GRS does perform sign cleaning when asked, and in this case since we made and fitted the sign, it’s part of the follow-up service. Here’s the cleaned version:

Looks much better, don’t you think?

As Christmas approaches we think we should inform you that we will be closed from 12.00pm on Friday 19th December 2008 and will re-open at 8.00am Monday 5th January 2009.

We would like to wish all our customers a Happy Christmas and Prosperous New Year!

In homage to Gavin & Stacey, the title says it all. Well, will tell it all.

We are a small company, and justifiably proud to have succeeded to this point. Like many small companies there have been trials and tribulations, ups and downs. With the time and dedication of many people the company has prospered and grown from a one-man outfit at the beginning (some twenty years ago) to nearly twenty employees now.

As you may imagine, whether you work for yourself, another small company, or a large company, the rules and regulations of running businesses have become more and more complicated as time has passed. This is however, becoming more and more of a deluge rather than a few letters informing us of regulatory and legal changes.

Submitting job proposals has become a lesson in following legal mumbo-jumbo. The various policies you must have in place have become so numerous and onerous that not having one can mean the difference between getting a contract and not (and that’s just pre-qualification!).

Writing this article I am aware I am not a manager, I am an employee, and even though I may not be involved in decision-making I have to say that I have sympathy for those that have to wade through this minefield of bureaucratic red tape - just to get in the door - kudos to their patience. I cannot imagine spending day after day filling out forms just so someone deciding on a contact can even look at our contract! How inane and ridiculous is that?

We have a very forthright and straightforward equal opportunities policy - the owner looks at everyone the same, regardless of sex, race, colour, religion, and so on. That seems fair to me. But this being the case, we -still- get rejected because our policy is not good enough. How can you be more fair? Here is one council’s list of Acts we should be “aware of”:

• Sex Discrimination Acts 1975 and 1986;
• Race Relations Act 1976;
• 2000 and 2003;
• Equal Pay Act 1970;
• Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and (Exceptions) Order 1975;
• Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994;
• Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (Amendment) Regulations 2003;
• Employment Rights Act 1996;
• Employment Act 2002;
• Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003;
• Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003.

I (we) write this article in the hope that someone may also be in our position - a small company trying to stay upright, struggling against the governmental nonsense that they throw against us (even in these hard times) - and ask if you could give us a call, contact us, comment on this post. And even, if you think this might have jolted you a little, write to your MP and ask why more and more regulations are piled on us when we are the wheels of industry that keep this country moving…

Lastly, I am reminded of a famous quote, which I think would be appropriate at this point, supposedly attributed to Oscar Wilde:

The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.

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.

Having successfully designed and manufactured signs for many years, GRS Sign Company Ltd., is still more than happy to bring suppliers and hardware manufacturers in to teach the staff about new methods of construction and new products.

This was the whole point of the training session we recently had with Spandex, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of modular products for signs.

This was one of those times when all of the staff were involved; those who designed the signs, those who constructed and manufactured them, those who cut vinyls, and so on. We all participated and got our hands dirty, so to speak.

The gentleman on the right is the one training us; he gave us a challenge to use the bits and pieces we had in the workshop and sure enough, we managed to come up with something (with his guidance as to what special item we could construct).

The training was useful for all of us I think, we each learned something new about the products and what they were capable of, as well as learning new bits of information about existing hardware we already used. Familiarity with the names of products, and constructing them as we have always done is fine, but knowing how they were meant to be used from the horse’s mouth can sometimes give you a bit of knowledge that can prove more useful than doing what you’ve always done.

It may not appear that way but the global/world trade in aluminium affects GRS Sign Company Ltd. directly. How so? We use aluminium composite and 11g aluminium blanks in our work. In fact another way the aluminium trade affects us is with aluminium dioxide as a white pigment, which can directly affect all of the vinyls we use (which is a significant amount) as well as the white paint sprayed on slatz and other materials we consume on a daily basis.

So what are the advantages? It’s cheaper, that has to be the main selling point (excuse the pun).

Getting over that rather large elephant in the room (price), we do have to look at the disadvantages. Well they are unfortunately, many:

• Many britons are, or would be, put out of a job as a direct result of cheaper aluminium from China (which is where the majority of it comes from).
• China is stronger and Britain is weaker, because of the global trade imbalance.
• There is a moral issue at play - the chinese workers don’t get paid an equal amount to workers elsewhere in the world, say, Australia, Canada, or Russia (which are the other large aluminium producing nations).

Should we pay for a lower-priced product knowing these disadvantages, to make more of a profit? Or should we go for a higher profit, believing in the rhetoric the World Trade Organisation would like us to believe?

Tricky issue isn’t it?

Interestingly, recent figures suggest daily production of primary aluminium stands at 104,200 tonnes. Yes, that’s daily - the world uses a lot of aluminium.

Don’t we all think of ourselves as “normal”?

I know I think I am. I know every friend I have thinks they are. But then again, we’re all different. Our hair is different colours, styles, lengths, thicknesses, curliness etc., Our eyes are all different, even if we are the same general colour. Our heights are different, our builds are different, our voices are different, our accents may even vary even in the same area.

So if we really think about it, we’re all different from one another. Not so “normal” as you might think. Generally, we have two arms, two legs, torso, head and so on, so if we go by that definition we’re all the same, and thus “normal”.

But it isn’t the similarities (which are few) that make us “normal”, it’s those other things which although we know are different we equate as being similar. Then there are the tangible possessions to consider: we all live in a house, we all work, we all wear clothes, we all eat and so on. The “abnormal” ones are then a bit difficult to filter out, don’t you think? Could it be that someone who is from another country is not “normal”? But then again they have the same similarities and differences don’t they?

A question was posed by a member of the management, and over the weekend I have had time to give it a bit of thought.

Strange question though it may be, it was one that gets you thinking and brings all sorts of different problems to mind.

Is desperation for dentists causing us as a nation to get substandard treatments from practicising professionals not from the UK?

The thing is here, none of us really like going to the dentist. I won’t use the analogy “it’s like pulling teeth” but it is close. Most of us only really go when we absolutely have to, desperation in another sense pushing us to pick up the phone or walk to the dentist’s surgery. I hate going, but two years ago I had to, had a tooth fixed and three pulled (ouch). But afterwards I felt like it was seemingly nothing, no problems whatsoever. The anaesthetic numbed any pain (thank goodness!) and it was a doddle, in and out in a few hours altogether. It felt weird having the teeth pulled though, you could “feel” the roots coming out, hear it too, but there was no pain.

And yes, it was a foreign dentist, swedish I believe. Quite good care I must say, very professional.

Does it matter whether the dentist is “english” or say, “polish,” or “lithuanian”? Are their standards lower than our own? For that matter, are our standards higher than theirs? For all we know they may have excellent dentistry standards that put ours to shame (I feel most nations’ health services, at least in dentistry, put ours to shame).

The poll’s question is - are the dentists from other nations as good as “english” dentists?