President Gary Percy (right) asked David Konopka (left) to lead the drive for quality certification. Then A.D. Transport turned that expertise into a profit center. Above them flies a Ford Q1 flag.
Resourcefulness is central to the management culture at A.D. Transport Express. Present the Canton, Mich.-based automotive and general commodities carrier with a challenge, and it will find a solution in technology and changes in management process. And then it will try to find other ways to leverage those solutions.
In 1996, Ford Motor Co. notified its carrier base of its effort to have all carriers in compliance to ISO 9000 and Ford’s Quality Operating System requirements. The payoff for the compliant carrier would be Ford’s Q1 award, which, providing that individual service levels were maintained, would ensure the carrier would remain part of the Ford transportation family. For A.D. Transport, which operated about 125 trucks at the time, obtaining that certification became a top priority. Quality was, quite literally, Job 1 for the carrier.
A.D. Transport President Gary Percy marshaled his resources to obtain quality registration. To lead the effort, he called in David Konopka, who already was working on quality assurance initiatives in A.D. Transport’s Chicago terminal. Konopka, now the carrier’s director of quality, moved to Michigan and spent months documenting processes throughout A.D. Transport’s operation. He also translated those policies and procedures into electronic files and forms hosted on the company’s computer network.
The effort paid off. Working closely with Robert Djurovic of ISO 9000 registrar DNV Certification, A.D. Transport was certified in late 1997 to ISO 9002, the specific ISO standards that then applied to service companies. It became the first ground service carrier to receive Ford’s prestigious Q1 award, which it now holds for both its expedite and truckload divisions.
Percy saw an opportunity for leveraging the company’s investment in certification. “It was so painful and expensive, we decided we would take it to market,” he says.
The result was a new division, A.D. Professional Services. Through software and eight weeks of training and modification, ADPS helps its customers – some of which have been direct competitors of A.D. Transport – implement quality systems designed to meet the requirements of ISO 9000. To date, ADPS has worked with more than 50 trucking companies, some of which are large. Celadon, which today operates about 2,000 trucks, was the second ADPS customer. A.D. Transport itself has grown to more than 600 trucks.
