Fulcrum Associates was formed in 1998 in Redmond, Washington when Erik Metzler and John Graham decided to pool their resources and develop a product around what they had learned about a different way to help organizations be successful when implementing a quality management system. They had just completed a project helping five Boeing suppliers with implementing D1-9000, Boeing's newly modified quality system standard.
John Graham had started his consulting business in 1991 when the new ISO 9000:1987 standard was beginning to be implemented in the United States. After several years of helping various companies with adopting the ISO 9000 standard, in 1995 he established a contract with five Boeing suppliers to help them develop an ISO 9000 like D1-9000 compliant quality system. A key component of the contract was the stipulation that the quality system development was to focus on business operations first and D1-9000 requirements second. The intent of the business operation focus was to ensure that each company would be able to continue to focus on satisfying the customer's needs without introducing non-value added processes that would simply "satisfy the D1-9000 requirements". The business processes were not to be changed just to accommodate the D1-9000 requirements.
Erik Metzler was hired to help fulfill the contractual requirements. Erik and John started the project by interviewing each of the key managers in each company. From these interviews, they developed a business model for each company. This business model was used to define how the company carried out their mission and satisfied each of their customers. With the business model developed, the next step was to define the processes used to run the business. Each one of the processes was defined and flowcharted to document how the process was carried out. When all of the processes were completed in each company, a requirement matrix was used to identify where the D1-9000 requirements were addressed by the processes. With this "gap analysis" completed, the processes were modified or new ones were created to cover all of the D1-9000 requirements.
The successful implementation was highlighted by one of the smallest companies in the group. At the beginning of the project, the small machine shop (30 employees) had a small administrative support staff with one General Manager, one Administrative Assistant, and a half time Bookkeeper. None of their processes had been documented. Several years after implementation, they still have not added any administrative support and they continue to receive a "full compliance" assessment from Boeing.
Within two years all five of the companies had successfully passed a Boeing audit declaring them to be D1-9000 compliant. At this point, Erik and John decided to document the lessons learned and create a product that could be used for other companies. On the way to developing the final product called the BMS 2000, several events occurred. The first was that John bought out Erik's interest in the business and went on to develop the bulk of the product himself. The D1-9000 standard was discontinued and Boeing adopted the new AS9100 Aerospace Quality Management System Standard. The newly adopted AS9100 standard was then changed to adopt the new ISO 9000:2000 format and content.
Since the initial release of the BMS 2000 in January 2000, (read more about the BMS) it has seen several improvements and considerable success. Initially, the BMS 2000 was focused on the requirements of ISO 9002:1994 with added requirements imposed by the AS9100:1999 standard. Because the product was based on a set of business processes, there were only minor changes needed to upgrade to the new ISO 9000:2000 requirements. In fact, only one more process was added to the 24 processes already in the system.
One of the first introductions of the BMS 2000 outside of the aerospace industry was at a plastic extrusion manufacturer in Tacoma, Washington. The implementation took nearly a year to develop because the BMS was upgraded to integrate the ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 requirements into a single Quality and Environmental Management System. Because the BMS 2000 model highly leverages the Microsoft Office Product, the company implemented the ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 requirements into their existing system without adding any additional personnel to manage the system. Today they continue to benefit from the organization realized during the initial implementation. With a minimal effort, they have integrated their safety management system and marketing and sales with all of their other processes. Over the last year, they have begun to use the BMS 2000 as a baseline for lean manufacturing and six sigma improvements.
Another truly successful project was kicked off when Fulcrum was selected to help an aircraft interior designer in Kirkland, Washington implement the AS9100 requirements. When Fulcrum began working with the company to implement the 1999 version of AS9100, the company had 20 employees and was looking to expand their business into other related markets. When the company decided to seek AS9100 three years later, they achieved registration with a 100% rating (no nonconformities on the initial audit). Subsequently, the company has grown to 55 employees and is realizing a significant benefit from the BMS 2000. In one telling event, a new division of Boeing scheduled a 4 day audit of the organization and brought six auditors along to the opening meeting. After the end of the first day the audit team had found one minor issue that was corrected before the team arrived on the second day. At the end of the second day, the audit team leader announced that they had completed their audit and would be giving the company a level five rating, the highest possible rating. The team leader commented that they had seen other companies of their size that were equally good, but there was one significant difference they noted. The team leader said that unlike the other good companies they had seen, their company knew why they were good and could explain why because they had mapped all of their business processes.
