Yoder Brothers

Fifty percent cost savings. Thirty percent productivity increases. Adding a million dollars to bottom line profits in a single department. Valued peak-season employees returning to work for your company rather than a competitor. Curing operation woes in six months and 17 days. Turning complaining customers into loyal accounts. Reaching the top of your form and staying at the top of your industry. Yoder Brothers of Fort Myers has done it all. You can, too.

A leader among Florida companies striving to make quality a way of life, Yoder Brothers is the nation's number one supplier of chrysanthemum plant cuttings. A team of 70 managers and supervisors are courageous enough, determined enough, secure enough to admit that almost inevitably it is management that is accountable for error. Rather than fix the blame, they fix the problem. Managers view themselves as a ready resource and support service for internal customers.

"Quality management guru Juran said 86 percent of a company's quality problems are caused by management," says Chris Niederhauser, quality systems manager for Yoder Brothers growers. "Deming thought it was closer to 95 percent."

"Deming was probably right," says Leo Willenbacher, vice president and general manager.

"We design the processes. We give employees materials. We make changes. Then, when we get a result that doesn't match our expectations, we blame people on the line. Something is wrong with this picture," says Niederhauser.

Yoder managers have moved to a total quality paradigm. They insistently ask, "Are we doing the right things? Are we doing things right? What can we do better?" Fixing poorly performing systems, policies and procedures that affect performance of the company's 700 employees has made more than one career at Yoder Brothers.

"I'd love to tell you that we were among the first to seriously implement total quality management in the early 1980s due to foresight and visionary genius," says Niederhauser. "In fact, a friend of mine handed me a statistical process control book from his university and said, 'try this.' As a result, Yoder managers operate by fact. The data tells us where to go."

Employees here are empowered to benefit from the constant stream of data analysis flowing from Yoder research and production units. As many as 20 task-oriented quality teams are on the field each year with a multitude of assignments and a single vision: to continuously improve customer and employee satisfaction to the end of becoming recognized as the best managed supplier of horticultural products and services in the country.

Two breakthroughs in excellence form the foundation of Yoder's success. The first occurred at corporate headquarters in Barberton, Ohio in the 1940s when scientists learned how to trick chrysanthemum plants into flowering on cue, waiting to form buds and bloom until just before they were in customer's hands at retail.

The second, learning how to grow flowering plants "clean" of diseases, pests, injuries, physiological disorders and nutritional imbalances, was finessed in the 1980s and continues to evolve.

The first technique controls blossoming by controlling periods of light and temperature in growing beds. The second technology occupies 12 applied research scientists who constantly monitor plant products for problems and recommend preventive and corrective actions. Fungi and bacteria pose a constant threat. "And we hope we never encounter a virus," says Jane Trolinger, a Ph. D. plant pathologist. Trolinger spends much of her time running resistance trials and examining nutritions that strengthen plants and hinder disease development.

"To ensure healthy harvest, each year we start fresh with clones taken from 450 varieties of isolated nucleus mum stock stored in Pendleton, SC," says Trolinger. "It's the cleanest place in the whole company. No plant touches another plant. No human hand touches any plant. Every pot is certified clean." It's a practice that sets Yoder apart from the competition.

"A significant amount of our income is derived from patent royalties," says Willenbacher, whose operation ships mum cuttings to wholesalers, accounting for 90 percent of the market. "Mums, as well as our dozen or so varieties of dormant potted azaleas, and unfinished hibiscus, are bred for color, flower form, flowering time, and fitness for climates around the world."

Typically, Yoder reaps three 12-week harvests from each of its 20 million chrysanthemum stock plants. Two-inch cuttings are taken by hand from mother plants and shipped cool and dry for growing, five to a pot, by 5,000 greenhouse customers.

The Yoder Brothers of the '90s averages one major process or system breakthrough every year. Incremental quality improvements occur on a monthly basis. Managers walk the walk and talk the talk so pervasively that it is irresistibly changing the general mindset. Cross-departmental striving for quality is inescapable.

"Our company culture is on our wall, for all to see," says Willenbacher, pointing to postered principles and wallet-size mission statements of companywide objectives. "Everyone speaks the same language and understands the quality process, how they are to proceed. It's a culture of continuous learning."

"As an organization, we're always concentrating on a few overarching priorities," says Linda Stetson, human resources manager. "Each year Leo defines the year's initiatives and asks us what we can do to move the company forward in these areas. We review departmental proposals, align directions and make up teams to tackle the most feasible and promising assignments."

The results?

· Accidental mixing of mum varieties was the number one customer complaint before quality principals were put into action. Policing and penalizing employees proved counterproductive, according to Ken Evans, unrooted products operations manager. Training employees in highly structured handling and sapling techniques turned the tide. Today, mixing is a non-issue at Yoder.

· Lack of uniformity in length cuttings was a long-term customer complaint. The mystery was solved when employees discovered that repeated deburrings of much-used metal hand-cutting guides had reduced their length by as much as ¼-inch. Countermeasures reduced variation in cutting length by 33 percent. Consistency of quality has become Yoder's stock in trade.

· Yoder's managers, perplexed by the company's inability to attract and retain qualified seasonal harvest workers, re-engineered the process. The first test, providing complimentary transportation for workers, yielded little improvement. The next step raised hourly wages. A three-day advertising blitz including community event flyers that touted the new pay scale pulled in 100 field workers in less than a week.

· Where product quality used to be monitored by a handful of inspectors, today hundreds of Yoder employees enthusiastically watch for any sign of trouble