Are You a Top Shop?
Speakers: Pete Zelinski, Editor-In-Chief, Modern Machine Shop / Steve Kline, Jr., Director of Intelligence, Gardner Business Media
Questions for Top Shops to Consider
Pete: What do you benchmark yourself against? Your shop? Your machining facility? What do you score your facility against? Against yourself? Against the way you've always done things? Against your comfort? The comfort of the staff? The way everybody feels good proceeding day to day? That's not bad. There's nothing wrong with that. We all do that. The value of Modern Machine Shops Top Shops benchmarking program is numerical metrics. Describing strangers, describing shops you won't visit, probably will never see. But real-world metrics describing the benchmarks other shops have attained. And you compare your shop's performance to that and it could go a couple of different ways.
What You Might Discover From Asking These Questions?
Pete: You might discover that there is this area of performance where you're falling short. Where there is this leading-edge class of shops that somehow are attaining a more effective metric than you, than your facility. What does that mean? How are they doing that? You ask questions like that and it's a little dangerous. It could lead to something. It could blow open a potential in your facility you didn't know was there. You're not realizing yet, but you're about to now that you have the information. But another way it could go is you discover, you're doing very well. This area you thought you were good, you thought you were pretty strong, you're actually one of the leaders. You might have bragging rights in your facility, and the way you're doing things that you didn't know you had. So it could go either of those ways.
Our Top Shops benchmarking data could show you what you're doing very well, what you ought to improve and numerically what that improvement looks like. Either way, it is a tool to take the next step forward to realize the next level of success that's waiting for your facility to attain.
What Distinguishes a Top Shop?
Steve: Three things that distinguish Top Shops from other shops, they invest more in their employees, not through payroll but through all the other benefit packages that you can do so. Benefits, and raises, healthcare in particular, is a big distinguisher for Top Shops. Top Shops invest more in their capital equipment every year as a percentage of their revenue and as a straight dollar cost. And then you can really see that they're making a concerted effort to invest in all the available technology, whether it's different machine types, work holding equipment, tooling or software, and coming up with a combination a mix of equipment and people that allows... They can leverage that to differentiate themselves in different market places.
Why Should a Manufacturing Professional Attend Top Shops?
Pete: We've been doing our Top Shops program in terms of research, in terms of published results for years now, but this year we're taking the next step. We're going live. This year will be our first Top Shops event. What are the advantages of an in-person event? The event is our opportunity to take these ideas that we've captured numerically, captured in metrics and explore them. Talk them out, ask questions. There will be the chance to hear from experts in
These various technologies and shop floor techniques that the Top Shops survey data have highlighted. It's also the chance to network with other shops, other leaders of other shops who are trying to advance their own organizations forward into the next incremental level of performance of these Top Shops metrics.
We would like to extend to you the invitation to join us. Are you a shop that wants to take the next step forward? Are you a shop that maybe in theory you know what you need to do, in practice there are some questions about how to get there? Please come. Come to Indianapolis and ask those questions.
Speakers: Pete Zelinski, Editor-In-Chief, Modern Machine Shop / Steve Kline, Jr., Director of Intelligence, Gardner Business Media
Questions for Top Shops to Consider
Pete: What do you benchmark yourself against? Your shop? Your machining facility? What do you score your facility against? Against yourself? Against the way you've always done things? Against your comfort? The comfort of the staff? The way everybody feels good proceeding day to day? That's not bad. There's nothing wrong with that. We all do that. The value of Modern Machine Shops Top Shops benchmarking program is numerical metrics. Describing strangers, describing shops you won't visit, probably will never see. But real-world metrics describing the benchmarks other shops have attained. And you compare your shop's performance to that and it could go a couple of different ways.
What You Might Discover From Asking These Questions?
Pete: You might discover that there is this area of performance where you're falling short. Where there is this leading-edge class of shops that somehow are attaining a more effective metric than you, than your facility. What does that mean? How are they doing that? You ask questions like that and it's a little dangerous. It could lead to something. It could blow open a potential in your facility you didn't know was there. You're not realizing yet, but you're about to now that you have the information. But another way it could go is you discover, you're doing very well. This area you thought you were good, you thought you were pretty strong, you're actually one of the leaders. You might have bragging rights in your facility, and the way you're doing things that you didn't know you had. So it could go either of those ways.
Our Top Shops benchmarking data could show you what you're doing very well, what you ought to improve and numerically what that improvement looks like. Either way, it is a tool to take the next step forward to realize the next level of success that's waiting for your facility to attain.
What Distinguishes a Top Shop?
Steve: Three things that distinguish Top Shops from other shops, they invest more in their employees, not through payroll but through all the other benefit packages that you can do so. Benefits, and raises, healthcare in particular, is a big distinguisher for Top Shops. Top Shops invest more in their capital equipment every year as a percentage of their revenue and as a straight dollar cost. And then you can really see that they're making a concerted effort to invest in all the available technology, whether it's different machine types, work holding equipment, tooling or software, and coming up with a combination a mix of equipment and people that allows... They can leverage that to differentiate themselves in different market places.
Why Should a Manufacturing Professional Attend Top Shops?
Pete: We've been doing our Top Shops program in terms of research, in terms of published results for years now, but this year we're taking the next step. We're going live. This year will be our first Top Shops event. What are the advantages of an in-person event? The event is our opportunity to take these ideas that we've captured numerically, captured in metrics and explore them. Talk them out, ask questions. There will be the chance to hear from experts in
These various technologies and shop floor techniques that the Top Shops survey data have highlighted. It's also the chance to network with other shops, other leaders of other shops who are trying to advance their own organizations forward into the next incremental level of performance of these Top Shops metrics.
We would like to extend to you the invitation to join us. Are you a shop that wants to take the next step forward? Are you a shop that maybe in theory you know what you need to do, in practice there are some questions about how to get there? Please come. Come to Indianapolis and ask those questions.
