MBN USA
April 20, 2021
Quality takes center stage in Trane Technologies, TSMSDC workshops
By Caryn Berardi
The TriState Minority
Supplier Development Council has been providing learning and networking
opportunities for its member minority-owned businesses and corporations through
its unique Raising the Bar Mini-Series for five years.
To continue this important
opportunity for minority business enterprises and corporations to connect and
grow during the pandemic, the three-part series went virtual in fall 2020.
Teaming with Trane Technologies, the workshops may have looked different, but
their main goal — to assist minority-owned businesses and corporations seeking
strategies for exponential business growth and success — remained.
“Within a short span of
time, the collaborative partnership between Trane Technologies and TSMSDC
yielded mutual benefits with several referrals of minority businesses to the
supply chain, translating from contacts to contracts and increasing favorable
awareness of Trane’s supplier diversity benefits,” said Cheri Henderson,
president and CEO, TSMSDC, which serves Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia.
“This joint effort creates and delivers a continuation of learning
opportunities to grow businesses to new levels to become world-class
suppliers.”
The Raising the Bar
Virtual Mini-Series offered TSMSDC members one-hour sessions led by Trane facilitators
focused on a different area of business that is essential to the development
and success of MBEs. Topics in this series included sustainability, supplier
risk and quality.
The final workshop
covering quality was chosen as an area that is particularly important to
minority suppliers and the supply chain, as the data derived from supply chains
provides insight into performance areas, Henderson said.
“Quality is essential to
business success,” she said. “The goal of this workshop was to increase the
MBEs’ understanding of how a customer sees data and address how an MBE can
improve its current quality management system.”
In the workshop, Trane
facilitators Rob Chisholm and LaMont Parson shared insights with the audience
for producing and elevating quality in their products and business practices,
as well as the importance of making quality an integral part of an
organization’s overall vision and purpose.
Quality essential to
business success
“At the end of the day, it
is about listening to internal stakeholders and external customers,
understanding what they are looking for and meeting or exceeding those
expectations,” said Parson, director, supplier quality and development,
Ingersoll Rand Inc., parent company of Trane Technologies.
For Trane and its
suppliers, this quality includes compliance with the International Organization
for Standardization requirements, producing reliable and cost-effective
products that ship on time and continued quality improvement throughout the
entire value chain, according to Parson.
And quality is not just
about the efficacy of a particular product or service, said Chisholm, senior
manager of sourcing excellence. It is part of the fabric of a company’s overall
purpose and a key factor he looks for when visiting potential business
partners.
“One of the first things
we do when we walk into a supplier is look around its lobby,” Chisholm said.
“If quality is truly a purpose, we should see evidence of that. And when we
walk down the assembly lines, there should be metrics out there on the floor
that we can see. Quality should pop out to us.”
The company also gauges
management’s commitment to quality when conducting its off-site assessments.
This is extremely important within Trane as well, where the focus on quality is
visible and communicated, coming down from the CEO and executive leadership all
the way to the production floor.
Leadership’s support
facilitates another important element of quality according to Parson and
Chisholm — employee empowerment.
“The person closest to the
customer — such as the person building the product — is a significant part of
quality,” Chisholm said. “The employees on the assembly line must know if they
have the products in their hands and the quality isn’t right, they have the
power to pull the stop. And leadership must show support for those employees
when they have the courage to do that.”
This focus on empowerment
extends to Trane’s relationships with its diverse suppliers. Supplier diversity
is an integral component of the company’s global integrated supply chain,
Parson said. During the Raising the Bar workshop, he and Chisholm shared the
corporation’s “Global Supplier Quality Manual” and other public resources, so
diverse companies understand Trane’s expectations and requirements as they seek
its business.
The company’s commitment
goes beyond just doing business with diverse suppliers. It includes developing,
mentoring and enhancing the women- and minority-owned businesses’ capabilities.
“It is key that we invest
long term in the well-being of those suppliers and develop them, because it all
trickles back to the communities they are in. It’s a win-win situation, as
those expert voices with great ideas also enhance Trane’s competitiveness and
capacity,” Parson said.
TSMSDC’s Henderson agrees
that the collaboration between the council and Trane Technologies through
opportunities such as Raising the Bar provides a mutually beneficial experience
that ultimately strengthens businesses and communities.
“With Trane Technologies
as a partner, MBEs have access to procurement opportunities and training
programs that can enhance their skills, as well as workshops and mentorship
programs that provide strategies for selling to Trane and beyond,” Henderson
said. “Minority entrepreneurs play a vital role in the economic health of our
communities, and it is critical that we continue to equip them with the
necessary tools, insights and perspectives.”
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