Davis Controls Ltd. - A Quick Update

I am late again...and once again, I apologize for that.  April and May have been two fun filled and action packed months that, for me at least, have flashed by far too quickly.  April is typically a busy month for us, as this is the time for our annual year end financial audit.  We are very fortunate to have an excellent accounting manager who always does a great job preparing us for this fiscal review and, according to our corporate accountants, this year was no different.  Thank You Joan !

April is also the month that the AHTD holds their Spring meeting and this year’s event took place at the fabulous La Quinta Resort in Palm Springs, California.  Needless to say, it was a welcome break to get away from the cold, wet and dreary remnants of our long winter season to the sun and heat of Palm Desert.  For me, AHTD meetings are always rewarding both personally and professionally and this one was no exception.  The weather, the venue, the program, the food, the drinks, the networking and the chance to reunite with friends and colleagues is a winning combination that I look forward to twice every year.  The meeting prior to La Quinta was in October at the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City and our Fall meeting later this year will be held at the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville, Tennessee.

The remaining days in April were rounded out with seven supplier visits and other assorted springtime responsibilities.  May was even busier.  We planned and executed a cosmetic facelift to our Oakville office lunchroom over three weeks in May.  After 23 years, the original pastel wallpaper and peach millwork were looking their age and the room was

 

badly in need of a renovation.  The project went quickly and smoothly and the room looks clean and fresh once again.  However, just when I thought that I was finished with building maintenance for the year, we experienced a pretty serious leak in the middle of the warehouse roof.  A comprehensive roof inspection confirmed that, like the lunchroom, our roof was quickly approaching the end of its life. Although we had not initially budgeted for a roof replacement this year, we are going to have to find a way to get it done, or deal with the consequences of more extensive, expensive damages down the road.

In my own defense, every time I tried to sit down and write another blog entry, something else slightly more pressing came along to distract me.  Hopefully I can now get back into a rhythm again and pop these out more consistently.

                                                                                                               
                                                                                                              www.daviscontrols.com

Davis Controls Ltd. - Leveraging the Power of e-Business

Great businesses rely on great people and great products, and in this respect, Davis Controls Ltd. is no different from many other successful companies.   However, in order to survive the competitive business environment of the 21st century, truly successful companies need high performance technology tools to optimize efficiencies and maximize ROI.  We spend a lot of our time trying to identify what mix of E-business strategies will strengthen our organization.  We understand the core competency of our company and we invest considerable time and energy and resources into building relationships that put us close to customers, so that we might better understand their needs.

In order to survive - and thrive – in this digital economy, every organization must rethink its products, services, supply chains, business processes and relationships with their employees, customers and partners.  Every business will eventually need to achieve a comfort level with E-business.  At Davis Controls, we believe that if we are not ready for this when our customer is, then we will lose that customer.  If you don’t have a culture of continuous learning and adapting and of changing your business model, then the opportunity that lies ahead is going to be missed. 

Competitiveness today is based on business model innovation and the exploitation of emerging technologies, and this competition will take place on the battleground of customer experience.
We have customer information and operational data from multiple sources flowing in with ever increasing volume and speed.  We have found web based business process management tools, with their rapid search and retrieval functions, to be an effective way to assimilate and integrate this sea of customer data, from which we derive insights and advantages that make up our competitive edge. 

These insights include a deeper understanding of customer and partner relationships and key performance indicators.  This information must be complete, instantly visible in real time and available to everyone in the entire company.

We employ a web portal technology that has been enriched with knowledge management and collaborative tools, including e-HRM, e-Logistics, e-CRM, e-Workflow, e-Documents, e-Project, e-Financials and expertise search technologies.  We use the Internet to communicate all corporate information relating to customers, products and employees, including documents, news and correspondence. 

Integrated with our ERP and CRM, the HRM, SCM and document management systems coordinate information from all departments into one multi-functional browser-based database, further improving information access and exchange.  The one-time recording of data in context, by the employee directly involved, links relevant data to all of the people, products, customers, suppliers, workflows and financial transactions concerned.  This empowers everyone in the company to deliver better, more complete service and faster response.  Integrating E-business applications with back office systems provides a scalable and flexible infrastructure that is less costly to manage and more seamless to use.

Integrated SSRS reports provide management with instantaneous access to sales results by representative and by territory, current accounts payable and receivable details, cash receipts, open quotes and a host of other important information required to make informed decisions and to respond instantly.

Success is measured in efficiency and productivity.  Certain other benchmarks, like planning and workflow activities, number of documents created, projects registered, orders entered by sales rep and several other physical KPI measurements are possible, and we do them; however, the final test for enterprise-wide buy-in is always whether or not the investment has resulted in improved productivity.  At Davis we make the case that the e-workplace environment and how easy we are to do business with, make up an essential piece of our value proposition. 

These collective capabilities help to make Davis Controls more attractive to buyers of industrial instrumentation looking for solutions to industrial problems, as well as to manufacturers of industrial instrumentation looking for a new channel, or a better channel.  It seems that ‘How we do it’ has become as important as ‘What we do’.


                                                                            www.daviscontrols.com

Davis Controls Ltd. - Happy 80th Anniversary!

By any standard, this rare and distinctive acknowledgement of endurance and survival is recognition of a truly unique accomplishment.  For any business, but in particular for a Canadian Distributor of Process Controls and Industrial Instrumentation, to achieve this milestone is a testament to sound strategy, dynamic leadership, generations of success oriented people and good fortune.

 

Founded on September 01, 1933, Davis Controls Limited is now a member of the small and select community of Canadian companies to merit the 80^th Anniversary distinction.  With headquarters in Oakville, ON and branch offices in Montreal, Thunder Bay, Windsor, Calgary and Vancouver, Davis Controls is a model of Stability, Leadership, Strength, Endurance and Control, the same attributes we ascribed to the products we represent.

 

Following graduation from the University of Toronto in 1928 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, Cecil R. Davis found work on resource and transportation projects in Northern Ontario and Eastern Quebec, finally ending up back home, where he became resident engineer on the newly constructed Welland Canal.  Shortly after getting married in 1929, the Great Depression set in and jobs became difficult to find and to keep.  Mr. Davis enjoyed short periods of employment with Northern Electric and Massey-Harris, but in late 1933, once again found himself broke and unemployed.

 

Cecil R. Davis - Founder

According to company records of the origin of Davis Automatic Controls Limited (as it was called then), C. R. Davis started out in business for himself with nothing but a bicycle to get around on, offering boiler and refrigeration repair services in downtown Toronto.  On the occasion of the company’s 40^th Anniversary Mr. Davis wrote;

“In the beginning there were no other full time employees besides myself.  When clerical or mechanical help was required, hiring was done on a part time basis and only for the work in hand.”

“The billing for the first full year of operation (1934) was about $8,000.00.  The next year it was about double, at approximately $15,000.00.”

 

Davis Controls Limited was one of the first Canadian companies in the controls and instrumentation business and began operations in a one-room store on Bond Street in the heart of Toronto.  Post depression growth forced expansion to larger premises on Wellington Street, then Blackmore Street, Dundas St. W. and finally to it’s present location on Bristol Circle in Oakville.

 

 

During W.W. II, in addition to the promotion and sale of the industrial lines represented at the time, Davis Controls Ltd. supplemented industrial sales with repair work for the Royal Canadian Air Force.  It was during this period that the company incorporated.  Shortly after the war, Davis opened an office in Montreal and then another in Winnipeg in 1955.

 

The familiar “Automatic Watchdog” logo, which has been with the company in one way or another since day one, was initially developed in two forms.  Both were graphical representations of a Great Dane, one in the form of the whole dog and the second depicting the head of a Great Dane in a two ringed circle.  The space between the rings of the circle enclosed the words “Automatic Watchdog Controls”.  Mr. Davis records that research conducted on successful advertising campaigns of the day revealed that domestic animals were second only to children in public appeal.  Davis elected to associate the “impressive” stature of the Great Dane with the ‘Automatic Watchdog’ monitoring and control function of the instruments represented by the company.   Over time, the company, the people and the products became synonymous with their role and responsibility as ‘Watchdog’ over the Instrumentation and Control requirements of Canadian industry. The rest, as they say, is history.

 

“In celebration of eighty years of strong and proud service to our customers from coast to coast, and in memory of our founder, who delivered his brand of personalised attention from the seat of his bike, we have returned the enduring and ever watchful Great Dane in a form similar to its earliest design.  This powerful symbol of our continuing commitment to:

·         Expert application advice

·         Reliable service and technical support

·         State-of-the-art products

 

and of the original ‘Watchdog’ mission of  the company, is a constant reminder to our staff of the responsibility being entrusted to us with each and every inquiry.  We take pride in the fact that our customers rely on our application advice and technical recommendations and continue to place their trust in Davis Controls Limited, just like they have been doing for the past eighty years.”

 

The very first product line represented by Davis Automatic Controls was Automatic Switch Company (ASCO).  Since day one, the company has been active in the areas of timing, counting, programmable control; liquid and solid level control; pressure and temperature control; solenoid valves and flow control; motor control and other specialized areas of control and automation.  Among the other very early products distributed by the company were Alco (refrigeration valves), Mercoid (pressure & level switches), Honeywell, Robertshaw and General Controls.

 

Davis Controls continues to represent a strong and balanced portfolio of world class products that deliver reliable and cost effective solutions to the Process Engineer looking for a level, flow, pressure or analysis solution, as well as to the manager of a factory automation project looking for programmable or discrete control of an automated operation.  Davis Controls offers quality solutions for all sectors of Canadian industry, including water & wastewater treatment, power generation, food and beverage processing as well as to the manufacturing community, including automotive assembly, suppliers of automotive systems, components and modules, packaging machinery, food and beverage equipment and of course, where it all began, boiler controls.

 

 

                                                                                      www.daviscontrols.com

Davis Controls Ltd. - Spring Into Growth & Loss Of A DCL Family Member

Over the last few months, there have been many new beginnings here at Davis Controls, not the least of which was our migration to a new software platform.  As is the case every year, Feb. 01 is also the beginning of our new fiscal year.  This year, Andreas Sobotta, our recently recruited National Sales Manager, organized a New Year / New Budget, Kick-Off meeting that included technical, sales and marketing presentations from our three Product Managers as well as from our Regional, District and Territory Managers and a few of our key suppliers.  Our entire national sales team was treated to outstanding presentations on Gems Sensors, Danfoss and their new One-Gear Drive for conveyor applications in the F&B market and new Parker/Balston Sterile Air solutions for the food industry, as well as new product development updates from WAGO, Indusoft and Nematron.

After hours, the sales team was joined by the entire Oakville office staff for an evening of socializing, eating, drinking and team building.  The meeting offered a great opportunity for the whole team to get together in both professional and social environments and have some fun in the context of articulating and discussing our corporate goals and objectives for the coming year.  Several new constructive ideas and suggestions came from the two workshops conducted during our 2.5 day meeting and we hope to implement most of these during the weeks and months ahead.

Participation by everyone involved was very encouraging and the feedback so far is definitely positive.  The stage is now set for us to have another great year and I look forward to playing whatever role I can in making this year, our F2014, a record breaking success.

Unfortunately, not every recent development here has been a new beginning.  The company and every member of it suffered the loss last week of Josef Speer to lung cancer.  Joe has been a valuable member of the Service Department at Davis Controls since April 1997, when we had the good luck and good fortune to add the Barber Coleman line of temperature controls to our product offering and Joe Speer to our staff. 

Joe passed away peacefully at home with his family by his side on Thursday, February 28, 2013 in his 55th year.  Beloved husband of Betty and dearly loved father of Jennifer, Samantha and Matthew, Josef will be sadly missed by all of us here at Davis Controls.

                                                                                www.daviscontrols.com

Davis Controls Ltd. - Migration To Globe/ESE

This blog is late, and I apologize for that.  I said that I would be late if our ERP migration from Macola ES to Exact GLOBE did not go well.  Well, GUEST WHAT.

 

Not only did our migration not go as well as we had hoped, it didn’t even go as well as expected.  Globe may not yet be ready yet for prime time in a Distribution environment, but it is close.

 

Since 1996, Davis Controls has been an early adopter of Macola and then Exact software, and as such, our implementations have never been problem free.  As a beta-site, we know this going in and we fully expect that with each generational or platform migration, we will identify, document and report bugs, problems and design enhancements that will streamline the process and improve efficiencies for all that follow.  We fully expect to encounter problems that we can help identify, so that they can be fixed quickly.

I am told that the integrated business software solution of GLOBE (ERP) and its front office counterpart Synergy Enterprise is widely used throughout Europe and I have no reason to doubt this.  I am equally convinced however, that this solution (GLOBE + ESE) has not been broadly applied to North American ‘Distribution’ activities or Distributors generally.  Surprisingly, we are struggling with some fundamental routines that should have been resolved long before now.   Like every other ‘Distributor’ in the world, Davis Controls receives shipments from suppliers all day long, we print Picking and Packing slips all day long and we allocate these sales to multiple territories across the country, all day long.  Again, like most Distributors, we allocate Sales and Commission credit to the ‘Ship-to-Address and Territory’, however this concept is not anticipated in the software and not accounted for in the reports.

 

In 1996, Macola with their Windows based ERP software, called ‘Progression’, did not account for Territory Sales credit and we were forced to develop our own work-around.  Then in the year 2000, with their e-Synergy/Interconnect front-office software, Exact again did not account for Sales allocation by Territory; so again we wrote a work-around.  Then in 2004, Exact launched Macola ES, the successor to Progression, and believe it or not, they forgot about allocating sales to a Sales Territory once again, and once again we had to fix this oversight in-house.

 

As GLOBE was being developed, I had the distinct privilege and pleasure in 2005 of travelling to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at the invitation of Exact Software, to provide ‘Distributor’ input to the design of GLOBE, and as you might imagine, I stressed the importance of Territory Allocation for Sales and Commission purposes.   GLOBE does not yet take full advantage of Sales Territory allocations, but at least they have created a field now for ‘Territory’.  Over time, we hope to be able to help Exact understand the flexibility and importance of this designation and develop code to use it to its full advantage.

 

I think that if we were starting fresh in GLOBE, we might have been able to set the allocation parameters more advantageously, however because Territory allocation was already set up in-house and managed differently in Macola ES / e-Synergy (from where we were migrating), an ES to GLOBE migration that does not map over all of the user-defined work-arounds is destined to fail.  Territory allocation is only one of our ‘migration’ challenges, but it’s a big one.  Don’t even get me started on ‘Picking Tickets’.

 

We are going through a difficult transition period right now, but I have too much respect for Exact Software and too much history with their products to give up on them just yet.  To their credit, they are actively working with us to fix all of our outstanding issues and good progress is being made.  It may take a few weeks, but I am confident that in a month or two, we will be singing the praises of Exact and GLOBE once again.  I regard Exact as an important business partner and fully expect that by the time my next blog is due, we will have turned the corner on this software migration and I look forward to receiving reference calls and site visits from prospective GLOBE users as I did in the past for Progression and Macola ES.

                                                                              www.daviscontrols.com

Davis Controls Ltd. - Focusing On Quality And Technological Advancement

Two issues that were surely not on the agenda for C.R. Davis’ in 1933 were questions relating to ‘Business Software’ and ‘ISO Certification’.  Both of these topics have been front and center for us over the past few weeks.

 

We have been certified to ISO 9000 / 9001 since 1996 and to ISO 14001 since 2007.  To be honest, when we first undertook this project, we did it because everyone else was doing it and at the time it appeared that we would be conspicuous if we were not certified.  Now however, we continue to maintain and renew our certifications because it makes good business sense for us to do so.

        

 

Proponents publish a top 10 list of reasons to be certified and for the most part, we agree that ISO certification has delivered the following results;


1. Improved Operational efficiency to respond to customer requirements;
2. Increased chances of winning public and private sector contracts;
3. Improved customer satisfaction by improving company and product quality;
4. Increased customer care and attention;
5. Helped us document, understand and communicate our organization processes;
6. Helped to build a more professional culture;
7. Reduced re-work and improved consistency;
8. Kept management and employees focused on quality and continual improvement;
9. Reduced waste and reduced costs
10. Achieved international quality recognition.

On the other side of the coin, a common criticism of ISO 9000 / 9001 is the amount of money, time and paperwork required for registration.  Opponents claim that certification is only for documentation.  Advocates believe that if a company has documented its quality systems, then most of the paperwork has already been completed.  Some argue that ISO 9001 is effective as a guideline, but that promoting it as a standard "helps to mislead companies into thinking that certification means better quality, undermining the need for an organization to set its own quality standards."  The standard is especially prone to failure when a company is interested in certification before quality and that while "quality has a positive effect on ROI, market share, sales growth, better margins and competitive advantage," that "taking a quality approach is unrelated to ISO 9000 registration.”  In fact, ISO itself advises that ISO 9001 can be implemented without certification, simply for the quality benefits that can be achieved.

In the end, we have found that it is easier for us to use certification and the tests performed by an external auditor as a way of preventing us from giving ourselves an easy grade.  Is it possible to mark your own exam without internal influence and ego?  There is something to be said for independent evaluations and that is the route we have chosen to take.

The effectiveness of an ISO system being implemented depends on many factors, including;

1. Commitment of management to monitor, control and improve quality. Organizations that implement an ISO system without this commitment often cut corners to get a certificate on the wall and ignore problem areas uncovered in the audits.
2. How well the ISO system integrates into current business practices. Some organizations that implement ISO try to make their system fit into a cookie-cutter quality manual instead of creating a manual that documents existing practices and only adds new processes to meet the ISO standard when necessary.
3. How well the ISO system focuses on improving the customer experience. The broadest definition of quality is "Whatever the customer perceives good quality to be." An ISO system should take into account all areas of the customer experience and industry expectations and seek to improve them on a continual basis.
4. How well the auditor finds and communicates areas of improvement. Auditors that can clearly identify and communicate areas of improvement in language that management understands, facilitate action on improvement initiatives by the companies they audit.
5. Having a dedicated, methodical, articulate and professional Quality Assurance Rep on staff to manage and implement the standard and provide leadership for the Quality Committee is essential.

By the time my next blog is due, we will have completed a major Business Process System upgrade as a big part of our objective to achieve continuous improvement and I hope to have lots of good things to talk about.  If you do not see a new blog in three weeks time, you will know that it didn’t go well.

 

                                                                             www.daviscontrols.com

 

Davis Controls Ltd. - Putting Things In Perspective

As we look forward to 2013 and our milestone 80^th Anniversary supplying Canadian industry with the process controls, industrial instrumentation and factory automation solutions required to meet their needs in this increasingly competitive environment, we are challenged to consider the business, economic and social conditions that confront our Customers and our Markets now and into the future.

 

Doing this has made me wonder about what must have been going through Cecil Davis’ mind as he considered the business, economic and social conditions of 1933 as he was about to launch the new business venture that has successfully survived 80 years.

 

1933 was the worst year of the Great Depression, with unemployment peaking at 25.2%.   In fact, C.R Davis was a component of that statistic.  That year, the US banking system, which was under tremendous strain, was propped up by the US government (US Banking Act of 1933) in an attempt to stop the panic withdrawal of money from the banks.  The continuing drought in the Midwest was turning once fertile and productive farmland into a giant dust bowl, the average income was $1,550.00/yr and a new house cost $5,750.00

The cost of a gallon of gas was 10^¢, a loaf of bread 07^¢, a pound of hamburger meat 11^¢ and a brand new Plymouth 6-cylinder car would you cost $445.00 when the average wage for a labourer was $20.00/wk.

Technology advances that year included the invention of the electron microscope in Germany and the Drive-In Movie Theatre in the USA.

That same year, the chocolate chip cookie and the board game Monopoly were invented, a 5-year old Shirley Temple signed a contract with Fox and the original King Kong movie was shown.  Larry King, Yoko Ono, Jayne Mansfield and Willie Nelson were born.  It was also the first time that the Loch Ness monster (or something) was photographed.  The inoculation fight against diphtheria in the western world began that year and Alcatraz became a federal penitentiary.

On the world stage, Franklin D. Roosevelt succeeded Herbert Hoover as President of the United States, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, making Adolf Hitler the Chancellor of Germany, (that same year the Gestapo is established), Joseph Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union and Benito Mussolini was the Prime Minister of Italy.

Under the circumstances, I would rather deal with the issues facing us in 2013 than those that challenged C.R. Davis in 1933.

 

 

                                                                   www.daviscontrols.com