Frequently Asked Business Questions & Answers:

 Click on the topic of interest:

1. Price Quotations
2. Competitive Pricing
3. Production Capabilities
4. Advance Notice & Turnaround
5. Quality Assurance
6. Pick up & Delivery

7. Purchasing

8. Warehouse

9. Insurance liability

10. Security

11. All topics

A. PRICE QUOTATIONS

1.  Question: I am interested in outsourcing some work but I am not sure if it will be financially feasible, how should I proceed?

1. Answer: Call our Business Development Office and set up a Free consultation meeting to discuss your job requirements or fill out the electronic price quotation request form and we will call you to follow up.

This will give us the opportunity to evaluate your requirements and to confirm our production capabilities. Following the completion of our discussions regarding your requirements we would then prepare and submit a written price quotation for your consideration.

2. Question: How do you quote a customer's job requirements?

2. Answer: We start with estimating the amount of direct labor it would take to complete the desired requirements. The next step is to identify all of the material and supply cost. We then calculate and add our labor, material and supply cost with an overhead charge based on the size and scope of the job.

3. Question: How am I charged for the production services and what are your credit terms?

3. Answer: Established customers are invoiced for financial terms of net 30 days. We have a credit application available or some new customers pay 50% down when they drop off the order and 50% on completion and pick up of the order.

Price quotations are always finalized prior to starting any production services and either a firm per piece price is identified by a price quotation or in the case of janitorial services a price quotation could identify a service charge by the visit, week or month. 

4. Question: What if your actual cost exceeds the quoted price who is responsible for paying the additional cost?

4. Answer: If their were no changes to the original job requirements and the cost were tied to the length of time to perform the planned direct labor requirements, Progress Industries / LCI would be responsible for any additional direct labor cost. Following completion of the initial order requirements, we would re-evaluate and revise our price quotation based on the actual experience for completing the task requirement.

Cost increases that we are not responsible for consist of unexpected changes to the job as per the following example: if we were told the parts would be supplied and we begin to experience unexpected damaged parts. These parts now require an inspection process to sort the acceptable or good parts. If the customer purchasing the parts did not identify this extra inspection time we would need to evaluate this additional cost and increase the price of the job to the customer accordingly.

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B. COMPETITIVE PRICING

5. Question: How is your pricing fair to me if you have individuals with disabilities completing the direct labor at a productivity less then a non- disabled worker.

5. Answer: Our workers are paid a piece rate based on their productivity. Progress Industries / LCI is an approved program under the New York State Department of Developmental Disabilities. As an approved NYS Vocational Rehabilitation Training Center we are allowed to pay our workers under section 162 of the Fair Labor Standards Act based on his or her productivity level.  Each individual earns a piece rate based on the established Prevailing Hourly Wage Rate for that specific type of work.

6. Question: How can you save me money from using my own employees or hiring temporary workers through an outside agency?

6. Answer: Having your own workers regardless if they are full, part-time or temporary workers is expensive when you start tracking all of the accumulating expenses involved. When you outsource to Progress Industries / LCI we are maximizing production efficiencies at our facilities because we specialize in and our set up to handle a diversified volume of production requirements. We have an available workforce of 275 workers and our customers are charged a fixed per piece rate that doesn't fluctuate and the charge could be looked at as a fixed expense.

When you decide to complete the work in house, you may have exposed your company to fluctuations in your expenses that can grow and expand very quickly.

We will just address fluctuations in easily identifiable expenses that are subject to change very quickly:

a. New employee expenses related to advertising, hiring, training, overtime & layoffs.

b. The daily attendance or absentee of workers and the productivity level of your workers on any given day can fluctuate.

c. Down time due to machine breakdowns or material delays can increase cost considerably.

c. The changing amount of supervision and quality control time.

d. Compensation & unemployment insurance, FICA & NYS disability tax continues to increase based on your company’s experiences.

e. Overhead, equipment and maintenance cost can add to your cost.

You full & part time employees could offer you more value if you could maximize their utilization and have them focus their concentration on your core business requirements.

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C. PRODUCTION CAPABILITIES

7. Question: I reviewed your web site and I don't see the expertise or capabilities for the type of work I have an interest in outsourcing, what do you suggest?

7. Answer: Call the Business Development office to discuss your interest because our brochures and the web site information is limited and is not intended to be all inclusive.

We have an extensive evaluation process and we would confirm our capabilities or in some cases lack of capabilities following our evaluation of your requirements.

 We take pride in only bidding on those requirements we feel confident we can provide and offer our customers a quality service.

Keep in mind in some cases if the volume is large we will develop the necessary skills and purchase the required equipment to provide the required production services.

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D. ADVANCE NOTICE & TURNAROUND TIME

8.Question: How much advance notice do you require for starting production services and what kind of completion time should I expect?

8. Answer:  The amount of advance notification time is contingent on the size of the requirement and if equipment, material and supplies need to be ordered in advance. If we are only providing the direct labor on the job the majority of requirements we can manage with minimal advance notice. As the job requirements get larger and in particular if they are tied to equipment or machinery a two- (2) week advance notice to schedule the necessary amount of production time should be satisfactory.

Your first thought should be to stop in the office or make a telephone call inquiry regarding our current production capacity for a specific job requirement.

Each job requirement is handled individually; we usually have from 20 to 25 jobs running at the same time all with different completion dates. With this many jobs in process, usually some jobs are running ahead of schedule, which allows us to fulfill a certain amount of short notice orders.

The General Rule of Thumb for consideration is the “the larger the job requirement the more advance notice and planning is required”.

In some production situations we may have considerable equipment and material purchasing requirements which can take additional time to secure delivery.

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E. QUALITY CONTROL

9. Question: What kind of quality assurance or quality control program do you offer.

9. Answer: Our production operation utilizes one of two Quality Control Specification Standards either the Military Standard MIL- STD-105E or the American National Standard ANSI/ASQCZ1.4-1993.

All production services receive constant in process inspections along with final inspection sampling complying with the sampling procedures and tables for Inspection by Attributes.

We strive to surpass our customer’s quality requirements to assure we have 100% customer satisfaction.

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F. PICK UP & DELIVERY

10.Question: Does your company provide pick up and delivery services?

10. Answer: We do have our own trucks for pick up and delivery services but pending the size, weight and location of the freight we also utilize outside trucking companies.

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G. PURCHASING EQUIPMENT & MATERIALS

11. Question: Do you always purchase the necessary materials and have them dropped shipped to your facility?

11. Answer: It depends on our customer’s requirements whether we purchase materials or the customer provides the materials. We also have customers that provide materials by having them dropped shipped to our plant.

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H. WAREHOUSE

12. Question: What are your warehouse and storage capabilities?

12. Answer:  We have approximately 10,000 sq. ft. of storage at our main facility on Arnold Avenue but we lease outside storage space and have access to an additional supply of storage space in the immediate surrounding area.

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I. INSURANCE & LIABILITY

13. Question: If some of your people get hurt or injured while performing my job requirement can I or my company be held responsible or liable?

13. Answer: No, the vocational work center is fully insured and responsible for our workers and staff while in our program.

14. Question: What if some of my product or materials is damaged by your workers or turns up missing while in your possession how can I be compensated for this loss?

14. Answer: If in the case of this example the material damage or loss did occur we would complete an extensive investigation and evaluation. If we agree the damage was the result of a failure on our part, our agency would be financial responsible for compensating the customer’s incurred loss.

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J. SECURITY

15. Question: We are concerned about product security, if we shipped our materials in to your shop can you assure us that they are secure.

15. Answer: Yes, we take great pride and care of customer materials by having a secure facility and a secured lock up area, if warranted.

We are always receptive to discussing additional security requirements on an individual basis and appropriate steps can be taken to meet the maximum-security standards required.

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