To be a successful leader, a person needs to give his/her best, set and meet the goals, understand the difference between needs and wants, have faith that he/she can do anything, and put every ounce of himself/herself into the work with full passion and strong determination.
It’s always good to start with a goal and work up to it. One gets an idea of what one wants and takes the necessary course of action to make it happen within a certain amount of time.
Tammy Frazier, CEO of American Data Plates, states, “I believe you should always put forth your best effort at anything you do. You feel better about yourself, knowing that you did your best if bad things happen. There will come times when you want things but need to put them aside to get the things that are needed for your accomplishments. I have always had faith in everything that has happened in my life. Just knowing that everything will turn out alright is good for your mentality.”
Journey to success
Tammy grew up in a low-income family, going to church and watching her mom and dad work very hard to support the family. She adds, “Watching them making sure we had all of what we needed in life to succeed was inspirational.”
She graduated at the age of sixteen and went on to create her own path. While progressing forward, she had plenty of hard times after that. She expresses, “Once you hit rock bottom on your path of life, then everything just goes up from there.”
After having her son, she was a stay-at-home mother for a few years. After that, she was employed by American Data Plates, Inc., and started from the bottom. It took about two years to learn the basics and move up in the office.
After five years, she took over the management position, and her life changed from there. She adds, “I was offered the job of owning a company and knew I could take it further and make it even more successful. I had to think about it for a while, of course, but I knew I could do it with the help of my partner, Ron Coger. This was my step into doing something big with my life and making it better. Already knowing that every part of it would be ok in my heart was also a big part of taking that next step in my life.”
Handling the responsibilities of the role, she learned several aspects of the business. She backed her skills and aimed to take the company to the next level. While climbing the ladder of success, she learned crucial lessons from every situation. She learned to be a better person not only for herself but to inspire others too. She understood the value of staying humble and realized that sticking with one’s own beliefs pays in the longer run.
She stresses the point by adding, “Knowing your worth and that you can achieve your goals to make your life better gives you the confidence to build things up and better, not only for your employees but your customers as well.”
Tunneling through the obstacles on the way
Tammy believes that hard times stimulate growth in a way that good times don’t. Facing challenges builds character and knowing that one can overcome obstacles, learn from struggles, and benefit from mistakes, helps lay a solid foundation for success later in life.
While climbing the ladder of success, Tammy ran into some speed bumps, but she tunneled through them with her passion and determination and took the company to the next level.
She states, “Leading a company to success isn’t easy at times. Everyone has their ups and downs; it’s just part of life. You have to deal with the issue, fix it and move on to the next(if there is another one).”
Overview of services of American Data Plates
American data plates, Inc. offers products and services to the aerospace, space, and defense industry in the United States. She adds, “With 95% of our products being either classified or under disclosure agreements, we can not go into much on the products we produce. We can say that we manufacture numerous identification markers with or without UID, barcode, or a type of numeric serialization. All of our products are made in the USA from raw materials that are also purchased in the United States. With a combination of our skilled and constantly trained staff, our technological advances, and the ever-changing innovative push forward in zero-tolerance rejection levels.”
American Data Plates produces products beyond the customer’s expectation level with a heightened sense of security and trust in the bond between themselves and the company.
She states, “Our company moves with “strategic precision” in all aspects from customer service to manufacturing for all across the nation. We have been able to adapt our principles to expand from aerospace, space, and defense to now include the automotive and medical industries.”
Redefining the industry with smart strategies
Tammy states, “The company has grown in many ways since my partner, and I have taken over. We have made many improvements from updating software, new machinery and making the most of advertising on social media. The old ways are being replaced with more efficient and less costly procedures not only for us but for our customers as well.”
They are working on upgrading their machinery and technology to produce the best product for our customers. They have talks with their employees to come up with better ways to improve their production time and processes. They are implementing policies, processes, and procedures and adopting them to help drive the company to put out the best product for its customers.
She expresses, “We have meetings every few weeks just to let our employees know what is going on with the company, talk about how they’re doing, make any improvements on their work, and set up new training sessions.”
These meetings increase integrity and provide a platform for everyone to speak about their issues so that they can be solved. The team makes sure to encourage accountability and ownership, making sure their employees have the right behavior for their customers.
She adds, “We all fail at times, but we must learn that is ok and learn from it. We must learn from our past mistakes to look to a better future and bring growth.”
Fostering strong core values to fulfill the company’s vision
There are five core values that strengthen the foundation of the company. They include:
- Enjoy the Journey
The company makes efforts to value and appreciate the staff by never taking them for granted. She says, “We do so by acknowledging every mind that is under our roof with acts of recognition from our company to all individuals with company lunches, raffles, awards, birthday parties, bonuses, and more.” They know that employees are the main assets at American Data Plates, Inc., and thus, they ensure that all of them enjoy their journey and love working in the firm.
2. Build with Precision
All employees of the firm are well-aware of what they build and who their end customers are, which helps them to cater to each client by rendering precise parts and products for shipment. She says, “We take a product or part that is great and make it phenomenal from start to finish with a zero-tolerance rejection level for the customer so that employees only focus on their duties and not worry about their vendor.”
3. Innovate Outside the Box
Tammy knows that innovation lies at the heart of manufacturing. Thus, they want to uplift the customers’ experience to a higher level of pride and trust so that they know that they can take products beyond their expectations.
4. Act with Integrity
Being honest, transparent, and committed to doing what’s in the best interest of the customers and the company, everyone openly collaborates to share the truth, and any breach of this is not tolerated at all.
5. Pursue the Dream
All employees strive hard to push themselves to give their best efforts and focus on sharing innovative solutions. Everyone comes into the firm inspired to make an impact through their talents, passion, and hard work.
Being a visionary, she has already set a vision for the company, and it states, “To expand and hire more employees and to have the friendliest customer service and provide zero-tolerance products’ for our customers.” They have always been a small business for numerous years and have already prioritized following a customer-centric approach.
They are aiming to get repeating customers’ day in and day out and having their name spread throughout the industry and inspire their employees to be their best version so that they become good team workers with the ability to handle every situation in the best way.
Emerging as the best place to go to have exceptional products and services, she adds, “It is a dream come true to be able to expand and grow our company up from what it has been, to be the #1 manufacturer of data plates in the United States.”
Leading American Data Plates Inc. to attain new heights
As the CEO of American Data Plates Inc., Tammy has a good routine of managing the entire production line that she sticks by. Firstly, she reaches the office and opens all the programs. Then, she goes through her emails and filters them out to discard the junk ones, bring in the new orders and answer any queries that customers might have.
After that, she goes through the bank statements and prepares invoices for any orders that were shipped the previous day. Also, she takes care of all the pending orders and ensures that the ones that are due soon are sent for production. Whenever the products are put on her desk for shipping, she creates necessary labels and prints out the correct paperwork to fulfill all the shipments on time. At the same time, she keeps a tab on all the other aspects of production, i.e., streamlining production, answering new emails throughout the day, and adding new orders to the pending list, and getting them to the right production area.
Further, she also keeps an eye on the stock of material before each order and artwork is to be completed for the products so that she can replenish the stock if it is about to get out of stock. In case there are any problems, she solves them by helping her employees with everything they need for fulfilling their job.
In order to keep her employees motivated, she feels communication is the key that binds everyone together. She shares, “Listening to what they have to say, constant interactions and conversations with them are important to understand the expectations and goals.”
She believes that a clean, tidy and spacious workspace sets a good mood for the workday. She also ensures that everyone is respectful, supportive, and honest. She also adds, “Learning to work successfully with one another and to be assertive and empathetic teaches life lessons much needed with our staff and customers. We ensure our employees experience job fulfillment, from task rotation to giving them the freedom to be innovative within their realm of work.”
Further, she has created a constructive feedback culture that assists in boosting productivity, improving employees’ decision-making capability, increasing job satisfaction, and developing trust in the employees for themselves and the company.
Future plans of American Data Plates Inc.
Tammy is happy to share that American Data Plates, Inc. is on the path to become the global leader in parts and products in the Aerospace, Space, Defense, Automotive, and Medical manufacturing industries.
She adds, “Our future includes the expansion of our facility in strategic locations to ensure rapid response and delivery times to our customers that are headquartered in the United States, that do require their parts expedited to their bases in other parts of the world.” The company also plans to hire an apt number of employees to fulfill and run operations on these additional locations.
