Keep the long term in perspective
Two years ago, few manufacturers — few companies at all, really — were prepared for the recession. But you can prepare for the ascension, however slow and modest it might be, by being smart during these coming months and years.
You might think about researching how to best tap in to loans, grants or tax credits that are available from various levels and departments of federal, state and local government to help increase business during challenging times. You might also consider your risks, especially over the long term. And you will likely want to diversify your product lines into other markets, so you aren’t as dependent on single-source customers, and, more generally, diversifying your portfolio.
“Company executives really need to come to fundamental recognition that things are really not going to be the way they were,” Berry says. “Facing that reality means they’re going to have to embrace a strategy to changing how they do business. That’s an important first step — recognizing that the ground has shifted and we need to find different ways of doing things. What we’ve been saying is that companies need to be looking seriously at how they take their instinct product lines and adapt them and diversify them to other markets so they’re not so dependent on single-source customers.
“Diversifying their portfolio is an important strategy for avoiding the kind of massive negative impacts we’ve seen over the last year.”
Technology and education, as would be expected, can also play a role in increasing your business. Several experts discussed how the advantage of companies that are owned and operated in the United States is the technology that is developed in the United States. Domestic manufacturers continue to be at the forefront when it comes to utilizing technology in their processes, a trend that will only continue. To ensure that the technology is operated correctly and efficiently, workers should be more educated than they were 40, 20, even 10 years ago, and with so many quality workers still unemployed, there is a deep talent pool from which to hire.
How you handle all of that now might be the difference between a quicker return to profitability and increased production, and the far less appealing option of a long struggle back to respectability and some small sense of comfort in the market.
Most important, though, is to do everything with the long term — and that refers to years and decades, not just months and quarters — in mind.
“One of the big unknown changes that everyone is tracking is what the (oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico) means,” Berry says. “It means that we’re more likely to see some more impetus from the federal government on green initiatives and sustainability and probably some more of a push for alternative energy sources and maybe the price of petroleum will go up and have an effect on the economy, too. There is a little bit of uncertainty around the effects of the Gulf and more manufacturing particularly.”
