San Antonio Business Journal - by Mike W. Thomas

As published in the San Antonio Business Journal. Reprinted by permission.

Scott Kaeppel, owner of Kaeppel Consulting, spends much of his time helping clients achieve quality control measures established by the American Society for Quality (ASQ). So he was quite pleased recently when he was able to get the current chairman of ASQ’s lean enterprise division, Wayne Paupst, to join his firm as a senior executive.

“We are fortunate to have someone with Wayne’s proven capability join our firm,” Kaeppel says. “Wayne’s work as chairman ... has helped companies and executive leaders improve their quality efforts throughout the world.”

ASQ is a nonprofit, global community of quality control experts, with nearly 85,000 members dedicated to the promotion and advancement of quality tools, principles, and practices in their workplaces and in their communities.

Paupst, who resides in Pennsylvania, has more than 25 years of experience helping companies address quality issues within the precision machining, metal stamping and die-casting manufacturing fields for the telecommunications, transportation, aerospace and food services industries. He holds ASQ certifications as a Six Sigma Black Belt, Quality Engineer, Quality Manager, Quality Auditor, Quality Technician, Quality Inspector, Process Analyst, and Quality Improvement Associate.

Kaeppel calls Paupst the “guru of gurus” on quality control and process engineering. “(Paupst) has forgotten more things about process engineering than I ever learned,” Kaeppel says. “He is just the best there is.”

Steady growth

Kaeppel Consulting has 12 employees and brought in about $1.5 million in revenues last year. Kaeppel says he expects to have revenues of about $2 million this year. Some of Kaeppel Consulting’s clients include the Texas Department of Public Safety, Liberty Mutual, Mutual of Omaha and Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield. Kaeppel, who founded his consulting firm last May, was a senior vice president at USAA from 2001 to 2007 — where he was in charge of process engineering. While at USAA, Kaeppel helped manage the financial institution’s transition to online deposits where customers could deposit checks with a scanner over the Internet. His work there earned praise from USAA officials.

“I worked on several key projects with Scott while at USAA,” says Don Jones, a former assistant vice president at USAA. “His success stems from his knowledge of Six Sigma (a quality control process), his ability to evaluate complex situations accurately, his honesty, and his ability to be a committed business partner. We were dealing with organizational process and structural changes where the savings could be several million dollars a year. Scott’s commitment and leadership in support of those changes made the tough journey successful.”

“Scott provided world-class process engineering strategy to USAA and made a material impact on USAA’s performance,” adds Chris Mandel, assistant vice president for enterprise risk management at USAA. “He is highly intelligent and has great strategic vision.”

Today, Kaeppel sees himself like a physical trainer who works with top athletes. “We help them to identify their areas of improvement, lay out a clear, measurable, achievable plan, and then help them to reach their targeted level of performance.”

A chance encounter

Paupst says he met Kaeppel by chance at a conference about one year ago and was impressed that they seemed to have a lot in common. When he learned a bit later that Kaeppel had launched his own firm, he decided to seek him out to inquire about a position.

“I had really enjoyed working with him at the conference,” Paupst recalls. “At the time, I was working with some retired guys who had no motivation so I called him up and joked that I should go to work for you.”

Kaeppel did not hesitate to offer the position and Paupst says after praying about it over the holidays, he decided to come aboard, bringing his client base with him. Paupst says he has seen a trend for several years toward utilization of process engineering to try and reduce costs. Done right, he says, it can be a more effective way to save money while preserving jobs as opposed to outsourcing manufacturing jobs to companies overseas.

“That is the trend I’ve been seeing and the recession is helping to drive it even further,” Paupst says.

Paupst says he enjoys training people using Six Sigma and lean techniques and he says it gives him a good feeling knowing that he has helped people to go to the next level of efficiency and quality control.

Paupst will continue to reside in Pennsylvania, but says he may have an opportunity to come to San Antonio soon to work with a subsidiary of one of his clients that is based in Seguin. Paupst will be traveling in March to speak at national Six Sigma and lean enterprise conferences being held in New Orleans and Phoenix.