Page 295 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

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SIX SIGMA PETERSON’S QUEST FOR SUCCESS
If you could save hundreds—even thousands—of household dollars using a time-tested program, wouldn’t you give it a try? Most people would. You’d be crazy not to. What if you owned a business and could do the same thing, only in the hundreds of thousands—even millions—of dollars?
That’s exactly what Caterpillar asked its dealers to do back in 2004. Peterson was among a half-dozen dealers invited to Peoria to learn about the new Six Sigma program they were rolling out to all their dealers and sup- pliers. “The idea is to get full supply-chain integration with this new process improvement tool to make every- thing as efficient as possible from beginning to end,” explains Erin Sorgel, CFO, who, from 2007—2017, was everything from QFS black belt to deployment champion. Cat’s goal is to involve everything from individual parts and components all the way through to the finish-line with delivery of the machine to the customer’s jobsite.
In July 2004, Peterson launched a new program called Quest For Success (QFS) using the Six Sigma process as its backbone. “QFS has created a framework where we constantly look at our operations and strive to do things as effectively and efficiently as possible,” explains Mark Ehni, vice president of Parts Operations and Peterson’s original deployment champion (DC)—retired 2020. “Efficiency translates directly to how well we take care of our customers, who are the ultimate judge in how successful we are going to be.”
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