Loose lips sink ships… and shops

Shop managers never know what challenges they will face on a given day. One issue that’s reared its head with me this year is confidentiality. Even as customers have increasingly mandated strict confidentiality guidelines as a prerequisite to getting their business, we have received information throughout the year indicating certain visitors to our shop have repeated some of what they observed going on within our operation, or even talked about customer parts we may be producing.

There are no top-secret products produced in our shop, but there are many proprietary products being machined or fabricated that are critical to the livelihood of our customers. And they understandably expect and demand we maintain confidentiality.

If you’re running an ethical operation, you’d honor such requirements whether there was an agreement on file or not. With regular reports of critical information being stolen, it only makes sense that most companies want their designs, drawings, documents, policies and operational workings kept confidential.

To manufacture parts, our shop employees are exposed to proprietary information and must understand they can be held accountable for releasing it without permission. Even telling a neighbor or friend about a customer’s design may fall into that confidential category, and such information shouldn’t be shared. Many consider this information to be routine and unimportant, but releasing it could put a customer’s business in jeopardy.

Even though your shop may be producing routine parts, your own internal workings shouldn’t be divulged to outsiders, either. Of course, you wouldn’t communicate critical details to a competitor, but others–such as repair technicians, equipment salespeople, raw material salespeople and delivery service drivers—might.