more thoughts on IWF conference

Yes buy a cheaper machine and do what I can with it. Actually I will be buying no machines until late first quarter 09. It is a company initiative to build up cash reserves. We are going to focus more on how we do what we do. I know that i have talked about that much. But the one thing that stands out the most for me from all the classroom time I spent in Atlanta which was about 10 hours is that good systems with old and tired machines will out perform bad systems with the best machines. So we don't really need anything machinery wise now. We can get along just fine with what we have. We need most importantly to do our kaizen events, develop our lean material tags, and make a maintenance schedule that we can actually work.
We need to focus on working as a team, and taking on more responsibility as team members. We need to focus on following our plans(shop drawings) which means I need to put more time in on them. many of the mistakes we make now are because the shop drawings are incomplete(my fault) and that the staff doesn't study them enough(staff's fault). And I am not trying to place blame every one makes mistakes, and we will always make mistakes and we will always look at why we make mistakes so we can limit them and learn how to catch them before we waste more of company assets.
I am going to be working more closely with Ventura, our finisher. He is about to go one year with the company which was a goal for 08. As the finisher, he is one of our best quality control guys. I need to spend more time with him and teach him to catch costly mistakes, I want him to do that, and I want to increase his pay in return.

One of things I am starting to realize about this industry as a whole from my latest trip to the IWF convention is that the industry marketers are influencing the business owners. Most of the seminars are sponsored by associations, and trade journals. They are picking and choosing the speakers, most of the speakers are talking heads and they are laying out the facts of any given topic. But business owners don't need facts they need specific steps of what to do. The industry marketers have all these softwares and machines to do different tasks. And they make it appear that business owners can't do it with out their goods. The thing is is that everyones business is different. The software and machines are so broad trying to be marketed to a wide selection of people. You can't take a broad usage and apply it to all these different types of buisnesses it just doesn't work. The business owner needs to be smarter than that. They need to look at their own business and decide how they can compete successfully. I mean it is a no brainer, if we all have the same software and machines than what makes us any different from one another. It is the same for out sourcing doors and drawer fronts. If everyone has the same fronts for their cabinets than what makes any different than everyone else. Not to mention that out sourced fronts all look like massed produced garbage.
I really liked the seimnars and the marketing tactics that it allowed for those involved.
I will always go to the seminars, I feel like I could have gained more from them, I should have taken better notes, not on topic matter(that was 90% useless) but on who the speakers where and what each of them had to say specifically so I could walk away with notes that have the speakers name, contact info, and there comments that primarily conflicted with my own. I figure that if they conflicted with my own thoughts than they were probably worth considering.
IWF is all about the seminars and who is speaking. The show is fill in of the seminars. Any one should able to keep up on the new machines, the show is also good to see the machines in person and take them apart to see how they are made. It is also a good time to buy machines because there will be good discounts on the demo models. The sales people are completely useless and annoying actually, they don't know anything about running a business and many of them can't even talk knowledgeably about their respective industry. I would say that 20% of the sales people have use.
At this show there were about 30 software companies, with exhibits. I hope they have other plans because our industry doesn't need that many and I think that in the near future we will see many of those companies fall by the way side. Design, machine, and code software will all be combined within the next two years and who ever is the first to do it will succeed. As for me I am going to focus on AutoCad and Solidworks, with an emphasis on solidworks as being the choice software for design and machining.
Gero from the cabinet makers association had the best advice for software he said use excel. A simple spread sheet that individual's design for their own purpose will help them out much more than some one stop shopping software solution made and supported from some dude in India that will do everything for you. All you have to do is sit back and watch. Not.