Machine builders
You are standing on the shop floor in the semi-darkness that exists after most of the employees have gone home. The shop is filled with the skeletons of several partially built machines. You think about the 150 employees and the customers and your responsibility for them. Then it hits you that the company is hanging by a thread. Under capitalized, one project that goes terribly wrong and the company goes under, the emplyees lose their jobs and the customers are left hanging without the machinery to build their products.
Machine builders, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in our terminology, are essential for the success of manufacturers. It is a tough business with a lot of competition and slim profit margins. Some have developed a product built from in depth knowledge of a particular industry. Profit margins may be higher there than in the segment known as "special machines." Companies there seldom build the same machine twice. Every project is designed for just one special application for a customer.
I once led the marketing and application engineering departments for a special machine builder and know first hand how tough that business is. In the July/August issue of Automation World, we look at this part of the business and how some have made judicious use of various types of automation to get a little edge on the competition.
There are a lot of success stories, but don't get tricked into thinking everything turns out great.
Oh, yes. That scene at the beginning of this piece? I was pondering our business one evening as the importance of the balance sheet and company leadership hit me. Each member of the leadership team had a function. That was when I realized that the job of the top leader, the president in this case, was to maintain good relationships with the people who financed the operations. For my company that was primarily the bank who loaned us several million dollars, not only for the building and equipment, but also for working capital. One misstep with the "guys with ties" and we'd be history. And that happened. Now I'm an editor.
6:11:29 AM 
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