CLIENT SUCCESS:  Colt Defense
West Hartford
370 employees

Company Profile
Colt Defense is a leading designer, developer and manufacturer of small arms and weapons systems for the U.S. Military, its allies and federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. For the last 150 years, Colt has been a major world producer of Military equipment. This has included the Gatling Gun, the Colt .45 "Peacemaker", the Colt Browning .30 and .50 caliber machine guns, the Thompson submachine gun, the Colt .45 pistol and more recently the M16A4 Rifle and the M4 Carbine.

Situation
In early 2001, Colt Defense made the strategic business decision to become registered to the ISO9001:2000 Quality Standard in order to maintain and grow contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense as a supplier of the M4 Carbine rifle.

Solution
Colt contacted CONNSTEP's Senior Quality Systems Specialist, Ray Snyder, to discuss their need to become registered to a quality standard. Snyder engaged Gene Brucker, a CONNSTEP service provider, who examined Colt Defense's documentation and performed a gap analysis to assess the degree of existing compliance with the ISO9001:2000 standard. He then assisted company personnel in the conversion of existing documentation of all Tier II (processes) and Tier I (policies) for the company's Quality Policy Manual. In addition, management and staff auditor training was delivered in concert with the Standard and Brucker also conducted internal quality audits to deliver a final audit report prior to the registrar review.

Results
Colt Defense became registered to the ISO9001:2000 Quality Standard in a record ten months and beat the deadline allowing them to bid on and win lucrative Department of Defense contracts.

Additionally, Colt returned to CONNSTEP for assistance with their internal quality auditing program. In response, CONNSTEP developed a plan and Gene Brucker again worked at Colt Defense acting as an internal quality auditor. As the internal quality auditor, Brucker assumed Colt Defense's internal quality auditing functions, conducted internal quality audits and trained 90 staff members on how to conduct internal quality audits.

With CONNSTEP's assistance, Colt Defense was able to realize the following return on investment:

  $100MM in increased sales;
  $100MM in retained sales; and
  $14MM investment in capitol equipment.  

Colt Defense Success Story (.pdf)