Page 4 - MetalForming February 2010

Contents February 2010
Volume 44 — Number 2
Cover Story
12 Transfer Overhaul Keys Successful Takeover Job
Features
14 Power-Packed Laser Fuels Contract
Fabricator’s Growth
16 Lean Manufacturing Fuels Recessionary
Rebound
Tooling Technology
19 QDC ROI, PDQ Commentaries
Editorial ........................2
Manufacturing Will Never be the Same
Brad F. Kuvin
TheScienceofForming ............22
Deformation Heating—Friend or Foe?
Stuart Keeler
Tooling by Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Issues with Stainless Steel
Peter Ulintz
YouandTheLaw .................27
Metalformers’ End-of-the-Decade Checklist
Douglas B. M. Ehlke
The Business of Metalforming . . . . . . . . . 28
Multi-Company Project Management: A Case for Collaboration
Michael Bleau
Metalforming Electronics. . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Sensors and New Management
George Keremedjiev
Blackman on Taxes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Insurance Secrets They Don’t Want You to Know About
Irving L. Blackman
Departments
News Fronts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 TechUpdate .....................8 SafetyUpdate ...................10 Tooling Update. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Classifieds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 AdIndex.......................36
Serving those who create precision metal products using stamping, fabricating and other value-added processes.
“Business models based on financial leverage will struggle to succeed in this new economic order.”
EDITORIAL BRAD F. KUVIN
Manufacturing Will Never be the Same
Afriend who works in middle man- agement for an automotive suppli- er, and who used to travel quite fre- quently to the company’s plants in Mexico and Europe, recently told me that regardless of how soon and strong recovery comes, travel budgets at his company (and others in the automotive industry, I presume) will never return to their former levels. And, as far as that expensive company-paid 4G wireless cell-phone package he once had, you might as well forget about that as well, he was told.
Hearing those comments sounded an alarm that, like most alarms, awak- ened me to a harsh and stark reality. I immediately thought back to an article I’d read nearly a year ago, when for many of us the pace of economic retreat was at its quickest. The article, written by Ian Davis, managing director of McKinsey & Company, discussed the realities of a pending and, at that time, far-off recovery. Now, several months later as we sit on what appears to be the leading edge of recovery, many manu- facturers are diligently preparing for tomorrow’s altered business landscape —what Davis calls “the new normal.”
You should read Davis’ article in its entirety, at www.mckinseyquarterly.com. But the main point, if I may paraphrase a bit, is this: Companies that increase their key profitability ratios such as profit margin, return on assets and return on equity the old-fashioned way—through real productivity gains— will be rewarded.
So, we can predict that manufactur- ers will never be able to run their com- panies as before, and that business mod- els based on financial leverage—or
debt—will struggle to succeed in this new economic order. Commenting on the McKinsey article, Plante & Moran managing partner Rich Antonini wrote recently (on MLive.com) that, “Manu- facturers have begun to think about how things will be different when the economy turns and things get back to normal. But what is the new normal?”
Unfortunately, some of the new chal- lenges created by the economic crisis will remain, even upon recovery. Antonini predicts, for example, that obtaining raw materials will continue to prove challenging. As such, metalform- ers would be wise to strengthen their relationships with suppliers and also learn to better anticipate their own raw- material needs.
Also, forget about forecasts in terms of developing work schedules. Instead, staying extremely close with your cus- tomers in order to accurately gauge and predict their rapidly changing part demands will become paramount.
And so, the common thread that connects the old way of doing things to the new is the relationships that bond metalformers to their suppliers and their customers. How, why and where we manufacture will never be the same. But success always has, and always will, depend on the relationships that bind our industry together.
Editor
bkuvin@pma.org
2 METALFORMING / FEBRUARY 2010
www.metalformingmagazine.com