At ASI Technologies, we produce two main deliverables for our customers: The first deliverable is performance. It is undeniable that in the last 25 years, ASI has established itself in the gear drive industry as a leading design engineering company that delivers high performance. With our unmatched experience in the gear technology world, ASI has managed to quickly react to customers' needs and to sustain leadership in the performance race.

Our second deliverable is quality. As we continue to build performance, we must continue to build the structure for a robust quality system. Performance alone is not enough in this competitive market. Two examples of products in the automobile industry that brought the line to demise (and almost the company with them) are the 1980 Ferrari Mondial 8 and the 1976 Aston Martin Lagonda. Certainly, cars designed for high performance and exquisite taste for their most sophisticated customers. The specifications, brand name, and slick features alone could not sustain rampant quality problems and bugs, making them infamous members in automobile manufacturing history.

With a successful 2011 fiscal year, ASI has committed to raise the bar on quality goals and to reinvest heavily into our Quality Assurance and Quality Control systems. We believe that our Return on Investment will manifest itself in the form of cost savings, continued good market reputation, and streamlined manufacturing, which will allow us to maintain our focus on design and performance improvement.

The high quality goals will be achieved by focusing efforts from Quality Assurance by testing to Quality Assurance by design and control. Testing does not improve quality and cannot be relied upon to uphold confidence in quality; testing only shows whether there exists good quality. So, is testing a waste of time? Absolutely not.

In order to move efforts from "Quality by testing" to "Quality by design and control", we need to have confidence in our test systems. Testing allows us to measure critical parameters and determine areas for improvement. Skillful testing is employing methods to reduce sources of variability (i.e. human, environment, and process).

ASI has continued to implement computerized end of line tests on most products. We have seen success and great benefits in our MK400 series transaxle, DC motor, and small right-angle drive end-of-line tests. Our goal is to implement similar systems on all our product lines in 2012. ASI is also investing in an advanced gear measuring system as well as temperature controlling high-precision measuring systems such us our CMM to further reduce environment variability.

With accurate data and extensive quality tools such as Six Sigma methods[1], we can approach quality from a systemic and cultural point of view. Good quality results from simplifying, controlling, and managing inputs (raw materials, parts, and processes), and understanding and defining parameters.

Above all, our biggest tool for improving quality at ASI is the hearts and minds of our employees. As Tom Peters put it, "Most quality programs fail for one or two reasons. They have system without passion, or passion without system. You must have both."