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In this sluggish economy, it is a real challenge to find ways to be profitable and continue to create value for our customers. At MESA, we strive to maintain our industry standing as the #1 cathodic protection supplier. To do this, we understand that our focus on quality and service has to be an on-going process and not just a "flavor of the month" program.

To insure we maintain our focus on continuous improvement, MESA has begun Lean Enterprise training for all employees. Our goal is to utilize the Lean Enterprise focus to help MESA develop and implement a long-term plan to streamline our operations for success. The basic premise of Lean Enterprise is a company produces more with existing resources by eliminating non-value added activities. Read more about this improvement initiative in the Quality Quest section of this newsletter.

Over the years, three levels of performance measurement systems have been in place at MESA. These systems are designed to measure, analyze and improve performance at the corporate, departmental and individual levels. Three critical performance indicators are error rate, 3-day shipments and on-time shipments. While these three indicators have stated goals for measurement of conformance or non-conformance and are important measures, there is no guarantee or promise to our customers attached to the goals.

For this reason, we've created the MESA Value Promise (MVP). The MVP is a promise we will make to our customers with respect to our performance. In other words, a performance promise - not just a performance goal. To read more about MVP, see the Performance - We Aim To Please section of this newsletter.

Through Lean Enterprise and MVP, we believe it should be very clear that continuous improvement is not just another marketing program at MESA - it is a way of doing business. MESA has been in business for over 23 years and we didn't get to be the cathodic protection leader by being a good marketing company. We got to be the leader by living up to our word and being quality focused and service driven.

Terry May