Industrial Case Study
Optical Communication Products Inc.
Optical Communications Products (OCP) was founded in 1991. The company is publicly held with corporate headquarters in Woodland Hills, California.
OCP has four regional engineering design centers; three in the U.S. and one in the U.K. In addition, there is a business office located in the U.K. to support
European customers. The company maintains a world-wide direct sales force. OCP is engaged in the manufacturing and worldwide marketing of optoelectronic
interface components, subassemblies, modules and subsystems for telecommunication and data communication applications.
Prior to working with CMTC, the company had 290 employees and $39 million in sales. OCP has a very diverse workforce; 50% of its personnel are
Hispanic, 40% are Asian and 10% are Caucasian.
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“After working with CMTC, we were able to
increase sales by $18 million in the first year.”
Steve Galer
QA Manager
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Issue/Needs
In order to retain the company’s Quality Management System certification
to ISO 9000, which was expiring in December 2003, OCP needed
to transition to the new version of the international standard (ISO
9001:2000). OCP’s major customers required the company to retain its
certification to an internationally recognized standard for quality management
systems (ISO 9001). As with most global companies today,
OCP wanted to increase sales and improve competitiveness, as well as satisfy
existing customer requirements. Transitioning to the new standard
would position OCP to achieve these goals.
Implementation Highlights
In June 2003, CMTC met with the management team at OCP to propose
a project that would assist the company in implementing and maintaining
a conforming quality management system based on the ISO
9001:2000 international standard. Achieving registration to such a standard
would not only meet the requirements of their largest customers,
but would also help them organize better internally leading to an increase
in productivity. In July 2003, CMTC kicked off the ISO 9001 project.
During the subsequent six months, the following project tasks were completed:
a Project Plan, ISO 9001 Overview Training, Quality Manual
Development, Overall Process Map Development, establishment of a
Management Review Process, Procedure Development, Implementation
and Training Assistance and an On-site Internal Auditor Workshop.
Improvement Description
The project lasted six months and in March 2004, OCP achieved ISO
9001:2000 registration. The company quickly began to see productivity
and sales revenue benefits that resulted from their commitment and effort
towards maintaining their quality management system. Productivity
improvements were seen in the ability to manage their processes to one
set of standards. Problems were identified and fixed in less time since the
company was now governed by one set of metrics. OCP was able to
increase revenue by acquiring new customers while retaining a portion of
their customer base that required the new standard. Since working with
CMTC to achieve registration, OCP saw an increase in gross margin due
to the institution of performance metrics that drove the continual
improvement process which affected all departments within the company.
This is attributed to the fact that OCP was able to decrease their
internal costs after making improvements in areas identified during the
implementation. OCP directly attributes the retention of 75 employees
to its ability to retain existing customers while acquiring new ones.
Further, OCP signed on for an additional project to allow CMTC to
conduct their first set of internal audits and provide further assistance
with the Management Review process.
Financial and Investment Impact
OCP experienced a sales increase of $18 million bringing total sales to
$57 million. OCP was able to retain 75 employees, thus keeping their
workforce at 290 employees.
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