At Walbar Peabody, quality is about developing a culture of compliance, which entails significant and ongoing teaching and coaching. All team members must seek new knowledge and understand why each process and aspect of compliance is vital. 

So, how do we do this? With a hands-on approach! In other words, we go to the shop floor for problem-solving and on-the-job training. 

Over the years, we’ve made particular strides in strengthening our standards and processes. Learn how our team constantly improves our quality and safety measures by keeping them at the heart of our mission.

Internal Audit Improvements

Earlier this year, we found Walbar Peabody’s internal audit program was missing critical components to meet requirements, so we assessed our processes. We strive to find and fix process opportunities before customers come onsite and fix them for us, ensuring we have optimal results when they do come—which, of course, means happier customers.

Additionally, our quality control team developed a comprehensive internal audit schedule to review everything within the AS9100 ISO standard and customer requirements to ensure all are met. This entailed training ourselves first. Our team went through an internal audit certification program.

Associate Director of Quality Compliance Wanda Crawford also developed training on how to do effective internal audits. As she explains, you could have the knowledge, but you must know how to effectively perform an internal audit. During this process, we developed a checklist to cover all key elements of an effective internal audit.

Engaging Cross-Functional Teams

But maintaining exceptional quality practices is about more than processes. Engaging cross-functional teams is crucial to developing a culture of compliance and building solid relationships. Doing so encourages all employees to be comfortable raising problems and concerns and asking questions.

Walbar Peabody’s internal audit program allows us to teach and train team members on everything from finding policies to performing procedures. Everyone is comfortable when a customer comes onsite, which also lends to a better customer experience, improved results, and positive feedback. 

For example, implementing a new process for designated engineering representative (DER) repairs made us a one-stop shop, creating new opportunities with both prospective and existing customers.

Transparency & Quality Culture

While the thought of internal audits and making significant process changes can seem intimidating, it’s all about understanding requirements and regulations. We have to look at our current processes and understand what we need to do to improve them. One part of this is benchmarking and developing new processes based on the data. 

However, the other part returns to our earlier point of making people comfortable. For example, we reviewed our new DER repairs process with our FAA principal maintenance inspectors, incorporating transparency and gaining customer approval. We also added the teardown report to communicate that the customer approved the parts and received the DER marking.

Yes, we want to ship high-quality products, but we want our paperwork to be equally high-quality and transparent! We also take pictures of the DER marking for objective evidence for traceability, develop procedures to document the process, and train all new hires, so they know what to do to ensure compliance.

This training also helps them understand why we do what we do. Leadership encourages all team members to do the right thing, stop work, and ask questions if they feel uncomfortable, unsafe, or that something is not right. Educating team members on WHY these processes are essential, rather than telling them to do it simply because we have to, gets their buy-in and ensures they feel valued.

Our priorities are employee safety, quality, and THEN shipments. When you have a culture of transparency and compliance, no one can take that away from you. And our customers know they can trust us to guide them through the entire process.

Leaving a Legacy Through Quality

As Wanda tells her team, the big picture regarding quality is the legacy we leave behind—and we can ensure we create a positive legacy by leaving processes better than they were when we first arrived!If you’re searching for a maintenance repair overhaul (MRO) team so passionate about quality, compliance, and safety that it’s at the core of our culture, let’s chat! Reach out to Walbar Peabody today.