Chronicling How Industry Leaders Are Accomplishing Unprecendented Performance Improvements with QualPro and MVT

Lincoln Memorial University Achieves Major Improvement in Retention with the MVT ® Process

After QualPro helped Lincoln Memorial University increase enrollment and improve the quality of students applying to the growing institution, the next challenge was how to keep them there.

QualPro’s MVT ® Process had resulted in a 30 percent increase in freshman applications and a 900 percent increase in ACT score of 30 or above among students who applied to the school.

“We’ve recruited these students—these highly qualified students. Now, we need to keep them here,” said Robert Sabbatini, LMU dean of students. “This was what was happening with our six-year graduation rate through 2010. It was going down. We saw an issue with that, and there was a definite challenge there. What we wanted to do, of course, was beat the national average in one to two years.”

Retailers Achieving Huge Gains in Comp Store Sales and Margins Using QualPro’s MVT ® Process

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In the world of retail, many factors go into making a sale. Most companies rely on educated guesswork to make important decisions about how to lure customers and get them to buy.

QualPro’s multivariable testing method takes the guesswork out of retail’s conundrums. Combining old-fashioned brainstorming with mathematical technique, MVT gathers improvement strategies generated by a company’s employees and outside experts, and uses complex mathematics to conduct real-world tests to ferret out the best new concepts for maximizing comp store sales and margins.

QualPro Leadership Symposium Added Improving Manufacturing Results Panel Session and Improving Healthcare Quality Panel Session

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Phillips 66 President of Global Marketing, Andy Viens, served as the featured speaker for the event, held Oct. 17-19 at the J.W. Marriott Buckhead in Atlanta, Ga. Andy discussed how Phillips 66 is using the MVT ® Process to better compete in highly volatile, competitive global markets. By increasing the effectiveness of their advertising media mix and other marketing activities, the international energy company is boosting profitability and better meeting the needs of its customers.

Additional featured speakers included Tim Pitt, Vice President of Marketing at Rent-A-Center and Colin Stewart, Vice President for Advancement at Patrick Henry College.

The manufacturing panel session featured executives from BP, Lincoln Paper and Tissue and Olin Chlor Alkali. Sentara Healthcare, BJC HealthCare and Blount Memorial Hospital executives were featured in the healthcare panel session.

MVT ® Helps Meijer, the Original Big-Box Store, Improve Sales and Margins

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The first of its kind in what has become a big box-driven marketplace, Meijer used QualPro’s MVT ® Process to reinvigorate sales and establish rigorous testing processes at its more than 200 Midwestern stores.

The family-owned company makes more than $10 billion in revenues but was challenged by the recent economic recession to bolster sales while keeping added costs at bay.

“We needed to get to the question of, ‘How is it that we’re going to know what works on the sales side? … Well, we already knew all that. We’d been in retail for … almost 75 years at the time,” said Meijer president Mark Murray, at a recent QualPro annual symposium showcasing client successes.

Practical, Fast and Cost Free—Three Key Elements for MVT ® Success

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For all the sophisticated math and statistics underlying QualPro’s Multivariable Testing (MVT ®) Process, one of the secrets for client success comes from three simple rules—ideas must be practical, fast and cost free.

“I’d like to say that I sat down before I ever started QualPro and just figured it out,” says founder Chuck Holland.

Instead, over time the realization dawned on him that the most effective ideas—whether in the nuclear weapons complex in Oak Ridge where MVT was born or on the manufacturing floors of QualPro’s early customers—involved changes in methods not spending more money. This is the basic concept for QualPro’s “cost free” rule— focus on testing improvement ideas that do not cost more money than you are already spending.

Healthcare Quality Improvement: MVT ® is Helping Providers Improve Outcomes, Reduce Costs and Boost Efficiency

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Healthcare providers are constantly working to keep many balls in the air at once. Hospital systems must provide quality care in a safe, highly regulated environment for a diverse set of customers—and stay in the black at the same time.

Whether a large national hospital system or a single community hospital, that’s exactly the kind of challenge QualPro’s MVT ® Process was designed to address. Those in the healthcare business have discovered that QualPro’s process improvement strategy, known as MVT ® (multivariable testing), is as effective in helping improve hospital hand hygiene and hospital-acquired infections as increasing patient satisfaction in the Emergency Department.

MVT ® Process helps Unifi increase market share and double stock price in competitive textiles business

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In production and in sales, QualPro’s MVT® has helped Unifi spin a yarn of success during tough times for American textile manufacturers.

The Greensboro, N.C., company first contracted QualPro to help solve a breakage problem in its synthetic yarn production process. With MVT, the company overcame this challenge, resulting in more than seven-figure-per-year savings plus adding capacity to the operation.

Next, the company set its sights on boosting market share in the highly competitive international market dominated by low-cost product from Asia. Within nine months, the company’s total market share in polyester filament was up 20 percent, according to Bill Jasper, Unifi president and CEO.

QualPro Leadership Symposium featured executives from Phillips 66, Rent-A-Center, Patrick Henry College, Sentara Healthcare, BJC Healthcare and more

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Phillips 66 President of Global Marketing, Andy Viens, served as the featured speaker for the event, held Oct. 17-19, 2012 at the J.W. Marriott Buckhead in Atlanta, Ga. Andy discussed how Phillips 66 is using the MVT ® Process to better compete in highly volatile, competitive global markets. By increasing the effectiveness of their advertising media mix and other marketing activities, the international energy company is boosting profitability and better meeting the needs of its customers.

Additional featured speakers included Tim Pitt, Vice President of Marketing at Rent-A-Center and Colin Stewart, Vice President for Advancement at Patrick Henry College.

Sentara Healthcare achieves a major improvement in hand hygiene compliance using the MVT ® Process

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Sentara Healthcare executives thought their 11-hospital system had hand hygiene well under control, but QualPro’s MVT ® Process showed otherwise—even before the system ran a single test to improve it.

The Virginia-based corporation boasted a 95 percent compliance rate with hospital hand hygiene requirements and called on QualPro to help it reach the 99 percent mark. However, a QualPro assessment revealed the company’s audit system, like many in the healthcare industry, was flawed. Actual compliance was more like 78 percent.

“When QualPro came on board, they quickly reviewed our process and realized that it wasn’t very good,” said Dr. Scott A. Miller, Sentara’s Vice President for Medical Affairs. “So what happened was, we modified our measurement process.”

Billions in bottom line benefits for manufacturers using MVT®

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Manufacturers specialize in making things and stuff. MVT helps them make it better and more efficiently.

Since QualPro’s founding in 1982, the company has been working with some of the world’s leading manufacturers to improve their processes through multivariable testing. MVT combines a sophisticated set of mathematical and statistical tools with the collective knowledge of management, technical and operations employees to create a rigorous set of tests aimed at uncovering problems and pinpointing solutions in every area of business.

“You’ll be quite surprised what you can do in terms of capacity expansion, in terms of yield improvement if you use the right tools and are willing to accept the fact that you may not be operating as well as you think you are,” said BASF executive Art Colwell, now retired.