In an industry where minimum specifications and price-only purchasing can pit manufacturers against each other in a race to the bottom, Maxwell Products has chosen the road less traveled, which we call Quality-First™. Our Quality-First business model is more than a mere slogan or clever logo. Maxwell Products delivers solutions that go beyond industry standard specifications, and when others view these specs as a finish line, we see them only as a starting point toward lasting, superior performance and ease of use. We believe that to deliver the best value to our customers, we have to strike the perfect balance between product, performance, and price.

“Quality matters because our name is on the door and our reputation is on the line,” said Ken Maxwell, CEO. “Quality-First manufacturing creates longer-lived brands and a more valuable company.”

If you really think about it, quality may be literally the last thing a manufacturer considers. Quality control and quality assurance? Often those are post-manufacturing measures. While every manufacturer probably promotes their end-of-the-line “quality checks,” Maxwell Products’ Quality-First approach ensures that quality of manufacture is the first consideration. Beginning with the company’s solutions-oriented approach, Maxwell plans for quality by avoiding stop-gap products and only developing tested, next generation solutions to customers’ real-world problems. And before manufacturing even commences, Maxwell Products’ research and development department ensures quality with the very raw materials that make up the company’s industry-leading formulations.

“We only select high-quality raw materials,” said Jared Pringle, Operations Manager. “We always look for premium ingredients. We develop strong relationships with reliable, reputable suppliers, and we never choose price over the quality of materials.”

In manufacturing terms, according to BusinessDictionary.com, quality is “a measure of excellence or a state of being free from defects, deficiencies, and significant variations. It is brought about by strict and consistent commitment to certain standards that achieve uniformity of a product in order to satisfy specific customer or user requirements.”¹

“To me, quality means continually improving product so it’s the best product it can be,” Maxwell said. “Some companies create a product that is adequate, but we aspire to much more. When we ship product, we warranty that it will be exactly what we say it is and perform as we say it will.”

Maxwell Products understands that in the pavement industry, specifications matter. Pavement professionals need the products they use to meet given specifications and perform as expected. If products don’t meet specifications, bids may be lost, job quality can suffer, or product performance can create unnecessary embarrassment. To ensure the type of quality for which Maxwell Products is known, we invest a great deal of time and money into our research and development department, which formulates and produces the most reliable products on the market today, as well as unique, innovative technologies like inteliBond™. Our dedicated team continually analyzes, augments, and improves our products until they meet or exceed specifications and perform to the highest expectations for a given climate or temperature range. Just meeting the bare minimum is not enough for Maxwell Products. This approach delivers superior performance and a better customer experience.

“Quality is important to our customers because their reputation is just as important them as ours is to us,” Maxwell said, “and they’re depending on us to make them look good. Just like we recognize a reputation is worth more in the long run, they do too. Our customers select Maxwell Products because our Quality-First commitment helps them build and maintain their good reputation.”

While Maxwell’s formulation and manufacturing standard is high, the company goes even a step farther and tests its formulas in live settings, under real-world conditions, prior to release as a commercial product. Even slight variations in manufacturing can lead to batches of product that do not meet specifications, which can be disastrous, expensive, and, at the very least, embarrassing if on-site testing is performed. However, Maxwell Products stands behind its customers, testing material before manufacturing in our in-house laboratory, as well as after production, prior to shipping, to ensure each product satisfies specifications and delivers precisely the quality and performance customers expect. Skip-lot testing, wherein a company tests their products on an intervallic basis (every other batch, every fourth batch, etc), is common in the industry and is designed to reduce the cost of quality control, but Maxwell Products tests every single batch. Each lot of material is put through a rigorous battery of evaluations to ensure proper bond, tensile adhesion, cone penetration, ductility, flexibility, flow, resilience, softening point, viscosity, and more. Furthermore, Maxwell tracks each batch by bar code to monitor quality and performance after shipping.

“What sets us apart is that we test everything before it leaves. We would never release an off-spec product to a customer,” Pringle said. “We never ship a product that doesn’t meet specifications and our own high standards.”

Quality-First means Maxwell Products will never compromise on quality just to beat a competitor’s price. We will never sell a product that doesn’t meet and perform to our high standards, because earning our customer’s business and trust is far more important to us than simply making a sale. At Maxwell Products, our name is our heritage and is worn by each of our products as a guarantee of quality and our commitment to the success of our customers.

Learn more about Maxwell Products’ Elastoflex and NUVO line of quality asphalt crack and concrete joint sealants, as well as our GAP-Mastic and GAP-Patch products, or contact our friendly and helpful sales staff to order material or obtain answers to any questions you may have.