Continuous improvement begins with understanding and maintaining the capabilities of what we have. Deciding what to do as a business manager is a high-risk, low-reward activity.
Continuous improvement begins with understanding and maintaining the capabilities of what we have.
Deciding what to do as a business manager is a high-risk, low-reward activity. We lack certainty about the future and our future needs, we are faced with ambiguity at every turn, and the penalties for a poor decision can be substantial or even career-ending. “Maintain to improve” is an idea to help you maintain the foundation of your business while you continuously improve despite the lack of certainty about the challenges you face.
Continuous improvement is incorporated into all of our companies’ mission or vision statements, explicitly, or implicitly. The idea of improvement is cultural, progress is the American dream. So how can shifting gears in our shop to “maintain” instead of “improve” be appropriate or recommended? Our job as managers is to help our companies “intelligently manage risk.” In an abundance of risk, uncertainty and volatility, should we be out there thrashing and kicking? Or should we have a plan to marshal our resources, pick our spots, and in the end, say, “do no harm?”
Now is the time to maintain what you have. Intelligently managing risk doesn’t necessarily mean taking risks. It can also mean minimizing your losses, loss of capability, capacity or talent, for example. How can you improve if you are declining in capabilities or capacity or if you are losing talent?
Maintaining just might be the best approach to the uncertainty and volatility we face today. Here are some ideas for maintaining capability: Document what you have. Yes, you know that you have X number of machines and X number of accessories and employees and … and …, but how does your company use that information? How many spindles are turning right now? This moment? How many should be? Why aren’t they? It is one thing to know intellectually what you have. It is quite another to deploy that knowledge to assure greatest returns. What is your capacity? What is your capability? Are you running jobs requiring that? How is your equipment being utilized? How do you know?
Assess and address performance to nameplate and records. Each machine, each employee was brought on board based on a stated capability or capacity. At what percentage of that capacity or capability are these performing now? If you are not using your people and process equipment at their highest and best use, you are losing, not maintaining, your shop’s capacity. Are you running the right jobs on the right machines? Do you have the right people in the right jobs? Why or why not? Highest and best use of your assets, either equipment, human or capital, is the optimum way to maximize your return. How many of your machines are running below 50 percent of their capacity or capability? Why? Now is the perfect time to address these deficiencies.
Train to maintain. In the military, training is constant. Because memory can fade, skills can become unpracticed and people can become over-confident. “Practice makes perfect,” my drum teacher used to say. Our customers get “perfect” from ordinary suppliers these days, so practice, and its industrial counterpart “training,” are essential to maintain the skills and performance of our valued team members.
Maintain to improve. Many of us have taken for granted a lot of the things we ought to have been actively maintaining. Making an effort to maintain is therefore the first step in our continuous improvement journey. Improvement means building on a solid foundation. Maintaining that foundation is the first step.
Maintaining requires little additional capital and improves the yield of your invested capital. Maintaining by training assures the highest and best use of the human talent in your organization. We may not see clearly what lies ahead, but we can have a solid understanding of what we currently have if we make the effort. Why not maintain to improve our commercial standing and ability to say “Yes!” when the next inquiry comes along? Maintain is to improvement like the pawl is to a ratchet: It prevents us from going backwards.
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Starting on Thursday August 8, 2024, PM will begin “gating” its premium content, asking all new website users to provide some information about themselves — name, title, employer, email address — before they are provided free access to the content.
We are doing this because the ways PM’s audience finds and accesses our content is changing. Google’s search algorithms, increasingly, make it difficult to connect PM’s content with the people who might make use of it. On top of that, generative AI like ChatGPT is serving up PM content to internet users without attributing that content to PM.
As a result, it has become increasingly important for PM evolve its audience development strategy and learn as much as possible about who is accessing our content, what content they are accessing and how they are accessing it.
With this audience development strategy, we hope to do two things:
First, we will be better able to deliver directly to our audience the editorial content that aligns with the machining materials, processes and technologies that interest them.
Second, we will be better able to connect the materials, equipment and services our advertisers supply with the audience that is most interested in them.
PM plays a distinctive role and has earned a place of esteem within the focused and specialized industry it serves. Large developments in the media landscape are forcing us to change the way we communicate with our audience. We are confident that our audience values the role PM plays in their professional lives and will join us in this effort to stay connected to them.
We thank you for your continued interest in and support of PM and welcome any questions you might have about the brand’s new content gating strategy.
