Facing the Crisis; Thoughts of a Manufacturer

October 7th, 2008 at 09:36am Bob Trojan

With the Global Financial Markets in a free-fall and banks collapsing around us, what can we expect?  What should I be doing, or not doing, to protect my company?  Surely, there will be some impact that will be negative, and I think no matter who gets elected, he won’t be able to do anything in the short term to make it better.

Good thing I’m not committed to big investments, just in case incoming orders begin to decline. If I did have some big equipment upgrades coming, I think I might rethink them.  I want to be sure that we don’t run out of cash at this point.

Factories will probably do more maintenance and repair work than buying new, so that will shift the type of orders to us.  These type orders tend to be more “need it now” types so we’ll rely on our “speed to market” strengths.

We’ll be following up more closely with the new markets that we’ve been pursuing during the last year.  If we can sell to new customers, it will offset any decrease from our current customer/distributor base.

We’ll stay on top of our accounts receivables, making sure we don’t have any accounts that exceed our payment terms.  That means calling when they are close to the payment date.

Quotes that we have made will also get extra care, more phone calling and getting to the reasons if they don’t get booked.  I’ve noticed that a lot of service companies will quote and will never call back to see what the status is, well, not us, we want to know what happens.

We’ve also decided to reduce our prices a bit, making sure we don’t lose business because of only price.  In this competitive manufacturing world, sometimes you only get one chance to bid on an order.

We have other steps that we can take…if it really gets bad for our business.  While I don’t want to see any negatives impacting ours or others’ business, it’s always best to think the “what if’s”

One thing I won’t do…run to the government!

Entry Filed under: Economy