Web Site: http://www.mesaproducts.com/
Revenue: Over $26 million
Workforce: 67 employees
Location: The corporate office and production facility is located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Branch offices are located in Houston, Tallahassee, and Los Angeles.

Highlights:

• MESA leads its competitors in customer satisfaction according to a third party quarterly satisfaction survey. In 2005, MESA led its best competitor in 17 of 17 attributes evaluated in the survey process.

• MESA focuses on the development of ongoing, profitable relationships. From 2000 to 2005, key customer retention increased from 93% to 100%.

• MESA leads the cathodic protection industry in its focus on quality and performance improvement. It is the only full-line North American cathodic protection company to become ISO 9001 certified. During its five year Baldrige quest, MESA implemented ISO, LEAN, and elements of Six Sigma in improving performance.

• All MESA employees are rewarded for financial performance through a profit-sharing program, with 35% of annual net pre-tax profits distributed. Since 2000, this payment ranged between 7% to 15% of annual salary. In its annual 2006 Employee Satisfaction Survey, 69% of employees classify themselves as "highly satisfied", placing them in the top ten percentile of respondents.

• While the overall cathodic protection industry in the United States is a relatively mature market, MESA's sales have increased 85% percent since 2000, growing total revenues from $14 million to over $26 million in 2006.

Customer Service

MESA promises customers "industry leading" customer service. It delivers on that promise through an intense focus on those performance attributes that drive customer satisfaction. Key performance metrics include ON-TIME Shipping and customer-affected nonconformances. Since 2000, MESA has increased ON-TIME shipping performance from 93% to 97% in 2005. Overall nonconformance (NCR) rate declined 25% since 2003 while major nonconformances declined almost 67% since 2002.

Results from a third-party customer survey show that MESA consistently outperforms its best competitor in the majority of performance attributes surveyed. This third party survey program begun in 1999 has evolved into a quarterly survey of key customers, providing MESA current, actionable feedback used in strategic, process, and product planning.

Relationships

MESA emphasizes the development of long-term relationships with both customers and suppliers. Through a variety of formal and informal strategic alliances, MESA has created strong bonds with key customers, resulting in a high retention rate. Although MESA actively seeks new customers, it understands that success in a mature market rests on its ability to retain key relationships. The strength of these relationships allows MESA to focus on delivery of value, rather than price. The relationship focus also extends to MESA's supply chain. Through ongoing performance measurement and communication with key vendors, MESA has positioned itself as the "preferred customer of its suppliers" while being the "preferred supplier to its customers".

Performance Excellence

MESA is passionately committed to continuous improvement as a means of achieving long-term success and sustainability. From its first rollout of Total Quality Management (TQM) in 1993 to becoming a Baldrige recipient in 2006, performance improvement has remained a key business strategy. MESA's initial strategic planning process in 1999 resulted in the identification of ISO 9002 as a strategic goal. MESA certified to the ISO 9002:1994 standard in 2000 and upgraded to ISO 9001:2000 in 2003. The company's non-conformance as a percentage of sales is less than 0.5 percent of sales, comparing very favorably to previous Baldrige recipients. MESA adopted LEAN as its primary improvement methodology in 2003 resulting in significant performance improvement throughout the organization.

Work Environment

MESA has created a culture of empowerment and continuous learning for its employees. All employees participate in weekly group meetings, along with a variety of regularly scheduled meetings and presentations aimed at facilitating two-way communication. MESA invests over $1600 per employee per year in training, almost twice the national average. Employees are provided opportunities to grow technically and professionally through ongoing training programs, while working in a friendly, family-like environment. Since 2001, employee turnover at MESA has been about 10 percent annually, approximately half the average turnover in the Tulsa area of 20 percent.

MESA has received many honors and awards for corporate citizenship including Best Corporate Citizen (2004, Tulsa People), Outstanding Organization Award from NACE International, and Manufacturer of the Year from the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce. MESA supports community organizations such as the Tulsa Community Food Bank, Adopt-A-Family, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, NACE Foundation, Down Syndrome Association of Tulsa and Oklahoma Blood Institute.

Opportunistic Growth