Making the best of a slowdown

It’s a new year and if the pundits are correct, many of us are in the midst of a downturn, if not a recession. If this is your situation, the stress factor is probably high. Even under these circumstances, however, there are ways to effectively use the extra time to add value to your business.

While most everyone prefers a full and busy workload, that’s not always the reality. Identifying some valuable activities and making time to complete them can have a positive impact when your business rebounds. Under the present conditions, one of the best uses of time is employee training.

“Training” has broad meaning and can include education in plant safety, forklift operations, cardiopulmonary resuscitation skills, quality and inspection methods, equipment functions and many others. During a busy period, most of these functions are usually low priorities and may even be forgotten, but a slow cycle can be an easier time to focus on improving employee skills through training.

Because many small shops aren’t in a position to pay for expensive training programs, consider using more experienced employees to facilitate. Or perhaps a cost-effective program through a trade organization or a local college would be worthwhile. Your payroll company may have training resources, or if you use an outside company for safety supplies and site inspections, it may have a good program with materials readily available.

At our shop, we’ve recently focused on equipment training as one area of need, including cross-training some employees on different machines. Increasing operators’ knowledge of your machines and their many idiosyncrasies helps not only the operators, but even related functions like job estimating, where operators and programmers can assist in the estimation process to ensure quotes are accurate and realistic.

A slowdown may also be a good time to implement a more organized procedure for quote reviews, ISO adherence or shop data collection. Many of these tasks require reevaluation from time to time, which is never convenient. The effort can reap rewards later, though.