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Business Smarts

Cost & Delivery: Opportunity for Finishers

Finishers focus on quality, cost and delivery—“QCD”—for good reason. It’s a popular metric and, if you can do it efficiently, it keeps customers happy. Trouble is, from a management point of view, “quality” always seems to trump cost and delivery. It’s probably because poor quality is so unacceptable. Well, I agree with the latter, but not so fast. Here’s the problem: There’s more potential fo...
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Forecasting 2015 Manufacturing Costs for Coatings Industry

People who seem to make the smartest long-term buying decisions in the coatings industry and basic materials industry aren’t lucky or smarter than everyone else. They are more likely diligent forecasters in tune with the market and how it’s affecting costs. STABILITY FOR NOW Right now, and in particularly in the last 12-24 months, manufacturing costs and related costs have stabilized somewhat in...
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3 Better Questions to Ask Industrial Coatings Vendors

When it comes to evaluating finishes and vendors of industrial coatings, it’s not necessarily what you ask. It’s how you ask it. Most purchasers, finishing managers and others whose daily lives on the job can be affected—negatively or positively—by the coating they are using are concerned with how well a product is going to perform, how much it’s going to cost and the quality of the vendor’s s...
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Customized Solutions, One Customer at a Time

The very notion of a “solution” has become overused and overpromised, like “quality” and “service.” As a result, “customer solutions” echo will-fit parts. Sure it’s gonna-kinda fit, but will it work? Will it solve your immediate problem and get you the results you need? Is there anybody assuring you that it will? Do you feel important, or are you all alone on this one? True customized solut...
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Finish Performance: 2 Secrets to Insure Success

How do you define finish performance in the first place? Is it a measure of how fast you can lay down a great finish? Is it a test of durability? A certain degree of customer satisfaction? Or is it more like an equation that weighs time, cost and effort against expectations, objectives and lasting results? In any case, a great performance always requires preparation. You have to know what you’...
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Beat the Gun With a Strategic Alliance

There’s a famous Indiana Jones scene that all finishers should remember when confronted with problems that get in the way of doing what you do best. In this acclaimed scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, an archaeology professor named Indiana Jones has just survived an exhaustive and harrowing chase through the desert. Clutching his trusty leather whip, Indiana is now confronted by a menacing sw...
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