metalworking Archives

Industrious Podcast Episode 9: Henkel’s Joelle Bondy On Her Lifelong Career In A Male-Dominated Industry

What started out as a job to make some money during college turned into a career. Joelle Bondy on her lifelong career with Henkel, working in a male-dominated industry, and what’s kept her there. “I’ve been here 21 years and I learn something new every single day. I don’t know if everyone can say that with their job.” For that and more, tune into episode 9 of The Industrious Podcast.
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3 New industry agenda items for progressive metalworkers

Here’s the on-ramp for 2015. There are 3 lanes, choose yours carefully. The HIT boys voted to bring back six of the Bastard’s more critical stories of the few past months. I’ve organized them into the 3 topics most likely to make your next general operations agenda. Six beefy short summaries follow; which themselves offer conversational takeaways. Click the link to the published story and hit th...
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Some jobs test your mettle. Choosing the right lubricant helps you make the most.

Metalworking lubricants perform a simple but critical task. Like a fuse, we learn to appreciate their usefulness more when they fail. And like fuses and everything else, industrial lubricants have become more technical and specialized. Always consider your options carefully. In 1914 the Bussmann brothers produced their first fuse from the basement of their home in St. Louis, Missouri. They soon r...
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From data to wisdom: charting your shop’s new path

Before metalworking coolants are drawn, lubricants changed, adhesives applied or before any conversion coating solution is even dreamt about, data are being collected and managed somewhere along the food chain. I am no expert in data science but I do appreciate how much (and how fast) industry is being tantalized with the power of data. What’s relevant for any shop is that meaningful data manageme...
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Three ways to profit by working it smart

Improve margins; increase machining performance Effort is money and in that regard, for a large segment of metalworkers, things can seem like they’re all conspiring against you. If your business is cutting, milling, turning, grinding or drilling metals you know the devil is in the details—often at a microscopic level. Yet to remain competitive, your business must run the gamut from maintaining you...
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Give your sales strategy a huge leg up!

Dive deep for more customer insight. The purpose of your business is to create customers. In fact, it is the customer who determines what your business is. Obviously customers are crucially important to sales efforts. But don’t we need to understand more about what makes them tick? Don’t we need to know more about the perceptions that ultimately drive their opinions and decisions? Would it help i...
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Business development requires bravery.

Who’s not afraid to stand up and reach out? It’s tough staying objective. Especially when it comes to your own business. It’s much easier to let the Vision go fuzzy and accept the deceiving, but compelling, comfort of the status quo. This form of comfort is a disease and it is never good for a business that wants to grow. Among many of the problems, comfort sustains an atmosphere that is suffocati...
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Lessons from a successful dictator/CEO.

“If you don’t ask, you’ll never get ” and 39 other tips. There’s one very positive trend in the economy right now. The number of small business bankruptcy filings has been dropping an average of 19 percent* year-over-year since the floor fell out from beneath us in 2008. Sure, there are fewer startups but I have a hunch that we’re getting smarter if not more careful about how we run our industrial...
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3 Elements of strategy you must have to succeed!

If you don’t know where you’re going, any old way will do. If your company is not working on surviving you have to be focused on growing, excelling and achieving goals. That’s a fact. Because, invariably, when we take our eyes off the target we usually miss. In other words, if you don’t get everyone rowing in the same direction, you’ll soon be working survival again before you know it. It can be a...
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7 Lesson package on efficiency and other survival skills.

New source for inspiration and wisdom will surprise you. Survival mode is a familiar place for way too many business managers. It’s not a place you want to visit often or want to be in very long. Once in it though, you want nothing more than to be out of the woods in a hurry. But what if reaction speed just isn’t your strong suit. In this post, I introduce a short new book that focuses squarely on...
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