Manager’s Desk: The new normal

When your primary market tanks to its lowest level in 30 years, the impact to a machine shop can clearly be drastic. Hopefully, your shop is well managed and in a position to overcome such a hit.

While managing our shop in 2017, we’ve had to overcome this exact scenario. Our primary market, energy, started a drastic correction in 2015 that continued through 2016 with reckless abandon.

It negatively impacted our fabrication side more than our machining business, requiring us to release employees and take other cost-cutting measures.

When such an event occurs—and inevitably it will for all of us—difficult decisions and careful management are required. Hopefully, you’ll be able to retain your best employees for the recovery. After all, a “recovery” was imminent, according to many who were reaching for any good news.

The occasional order also provided hope, giving us a rationale to hang on a while longer. We postponed further cuts and difficult decisions for fear that a turnaround would leave us with not enough workers to handle it.

Unfortunately, that recovery has not materialized. The reality is, it’s not going to materialize. A new normal has become our reality, and we’ve had to adapt to this new scenario. Just a year ago, we still believed the next good old days were around the corner. Now, the markets and circumstances have solidified our need to adapt and be profitable with less business.