You may consider your business to be one of the small manufacturers, but really you are only small in the size of your plant and its parking lot. If you do a one-on-one comparison of your company and its possible capabilities with your larger competitors, you will realize that you have some advantages that can be very large and give you long term advantages. First of all, being small in size can give you to ability to adapt very quickly to the needs and demands of your customers. You are able to establish close bounds with your customers through a consistent, quality product that you supply to them. You are in daily, direct contact with what are the upcoming desires of your customers. You have a close relationship with customer demands because you do not have several levels of marketing and sales that sit between your production facility and the customer where your products are consumed. When a customer has an anticipated change in the product that you supply to them, you will have prior knowledge of that change due to the short supply chain that connects you both together. You are able to respond very quickly to the modifications and upgrades in design and utility of products that come off your production line.
The scenario described here will work very well for a customer base that is not growing and there is no increase in demand for your products. In essence, your customer base is fixed and you are not getting any more new customers. Nor or your current customers asking for more volume of your products in their orders. You may be satisfied with this picture, but if your company is like most, you want to maximize the production possibilities of your business, and increase your profits. After all you do have to satisfy the shareholders who invested in your company. They want you to make as much money as you can with their investment so they will get some returns. You want to grow from one of the small manufacturers to a large one.
You can already see where this discussion is going. Provided you have a desire to improve your bottom line and the return on investments for your owners and become one of the best of small manufacturers, you will want to apply as many cost and production leverages as you can. Performing this task of improvement does not mean that you have to become a large facility with a large parking lot, but it could. You could improve your production rates, increase revenues, improve individual employee production, and keep your business facility the same size by implementing well-designed automation in production. Including automation as a way to improve your business will give you the ability to respond even more quickly to the demands of your customers. Turn-around time for product changes should improve, while deliveries of your products to your existing customer base will also improve. Your improved production rates can help you provide the same outstanding delivery of products to new customers that can now be included in your customer base.
As time passes and your customer base grows, you may discover that the small facility that you have kept in operation for a time is not now equitable for the production that your new, growing customer base demands. You will have to increase the size of your physical plant to meet the demands of the market place. One of the hallmarks of a very successful small business that grows into a larger business is its ability to not only satisfy an increasing customer base, but also retain its employee base. The addition of automation in your small business means that you will have new job classifications in your facility. You will need to look to the proper training of your current employees to satisfy the demands of automation for knowledgeable operators. Any investment that you make in this area will add to the positives that make your company more productive and profitable. As your business continues to grow, at some point, you will add new employees to your staff for positions that you did not have when you were a smaller operation.
There is no down side to the addition of capabilities that can be added to any small manufacturing operation that has a growing demand for its products. You can retain your physical plant size, while improving production abilities. But you don’t have to stay small in physical size, you can become a large manufacturer using the leverages and abilities that automation can give your business. Small manufacturers become large manufacturers everyday.
Our consulting engineers can answer any questions that you might have about the automation of your business or they can supply you with a no-obligation quote for automating your business. If you have questions about automating your business or you would like to request a quote for the automation of your business, please click the “Request a Quote” button below and fill out the form to submit your question or request.
