Why is Bastian Solutions successful? The approach of my tenth anniversary with the company prompted this increasingly poignant question. After all, there must be some reason or reasons why I have found such satisfaction with Bastian that I have contributed a decade's worth of skill, talent, and effort toward the company's success -- reasons apart from the pat answers of methodical application of project management principles and open communications. In answering this question, recent project experiences served to sharpen the focus on one aspect in particular.

Surprisingly, the answer lies at least partially outside of Bastian Solutions. Consider the average family car. Cars are perhaps the most complicated and complex technology in which most people ever come into contact. The amount of accumulated knowledge and experience in that average family car is startling -- thousands, if not millions, of man-hours spread across various specialties covering such items as continuously variable transmissions and the little plastic do-dads for the automatic window switches.

All of these components are catalogued, organized, and applied, culminating in the final product you see at your local dealer. Automakers develop extensive supply chains with reputable suppliers and vendors over periods of years in order to help manage that wealth of information. OK, material handling systems are not automobiles.

One does not just decide one weekend to go shopping for a new material handling system. Usually, the need for one is the result of years of careful planning and analysis. But the successful implementation of a new material handling system, similar to an automobile, is dependent on the accumulated knowledge, experience, and skills of perhaps hundreds of people sometimes spread across the entire globe.

Bastian Solutions has an extensive supply chain of trusted vendors and suppliers. These relationships have been nurtured over many years and numerous successful projects. Indeed, many of our suppliers have grown with us over the past 20 years. And as our systems have become larger and more complex, our suppliers have learned and adapted to our ever-changing needs.

Our vendors and suppliers truly play the role of partners in determining the success of projects. They often make important suggestions for improvements, contribute valuable information for developing reliable schedules, and without anyone asking them, do things in the field that provide those finishing touches which really make a system look professional. With such support and commitment to excellence, it is no surprise that these vendors continue to receive repeated orders.

In football, it seems everyone knows the names of the top quarterbacks, running backs, and wide receivers. Football enthusiasts, though, will often contend the games are won in the trenches -- the battles on the line of scrimmage between the offensive and defensive lines. Rarely are those linemen household names, and for that reason, linemen are considered the invisible men of football.

For Bastian Solutions, our vendors and suppliers are the invisible men of material handling. Their hard work in the field and behind the scenes allows us to deliver you a successful system implementation.

Author: Bastian Solutions