Cheers to the New Year

Happy New Year, assuming you’re reading this following a happy and healthy holiday season. The team here at MetalForming magazine and PMA sincerely hope that you and yours enjoyed spending time with friends and family.

As we turn the page on 2019 and usher in a new decade, why not take some time to reflect on last year’s successes, and struggles? Because, prolonged success comes from not only enjoying good fortune, but also from analyzing failures and making timely and effective adjustments.

Motivational speaker Denis Waitley (author of the audio series, The Psychology of Winning and the books Seeds of Greatness and The Winner's Edge), says:

“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing and being nothing.”

Most of the metal formers I talk to have been actively investing, learning and winding along new paths in order to forge new relationships with new customers in new market areas. Sure, stumbles happen, but most if not all have been able to make the necessary adjustments—sometimes significant—to how they do business, to ensure continued success. This includes, as discussed in this issue’s article on pressroom automation (page 32), adding robots and other automation equipment to the plant, sometimes in a big way. Says Robotic Industries Association President Jeff Burnstein, commenting on the steady rise in robot sales during 2019 compared to 2018:

 “We are currently experiencing the greatest period of robot expansion in history – over 180,000 robots have been shipped to American companies since 2010, and more than 1.2 million new manufacturing jobs have been created during this time.” Burnstein also says that he continues to see strong interest in robotics from companies that have never invested in robots before.

Oh, and by the way—automation also is making its way into the front and back offices of manufacturers, thanks to new software that can significantly streamline conventionally labor-intensive tasks such as quoting and help-desk/call-center operations.

MetalForming continues to present success stories of metalformers investing in their businesses—on the shop floor and in the office—to meet the challenges that lie ahead. We all know that ushering in a new decade promises to bring opportunities, and challenges.

Technologies: Management, Pressroom Automation

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