I’ll conjure new employees out of clear air! (Well, here at PlastiCert maybe we won’t have to). One headline after another: New CEO of XYZ looks to double size of company within five years To support expansion, XYZ and its franchisees are planning to hire about 20,000 workers. XYZ announced plans to add more than […]

We’ve felt it coming the last few weeks. Naturally the start of school coincides with it. The cooler mornings, earlier evenings, colors turning. The vacation requests rolling in. (Say again?) It’s not Fall I speak of, but hunting season. Being a small manufacturer in Greater Minnesota, the hunting season is as much a part of […]

You spend the summer getting to know your interns. Spend time talking during breaks, lunch, on the floor. Then they head back to school. A long time ago, I sent one son off to college, then two years later I was sending two off each fall. Now we get to relive it all over again. […]

It’s National Composites Week August 26-30, and companies across the country are celebrating the strides they and their customers have achieved through composites. We here at PlastiCert have our own successes to tout. Having helped our customers’ transition from traditional metals and even wood to thermoplastic composites. Such conversions offer up opportunities due to reduced […]

A big story this week was the two-page ad in the WSJ, signed by 181 Business Roundtable CEO members, representing retail, industrial, transportation, service, and finance; changing their Business Roundtable’s statement of “the purpose of a corporation”. Since 1997 the purpose was to serve their shareholders, period. Now they have seen the light. Realizing their […]

Manufacturers are all very familiar with operations KPI’s (key performance indicators). Tracking performance to cost standards, scrap, quality metrics, On-time Delivery, and others are second nature. Talking with our tax accountant the other day, he asked about some financial metrics. To his surprise, I had the numbers at my fingertips. “That’s impressive. Many other small […]

I hear and read a great deal about the work and life balance equation and its different aspects. This premise is usually characterized in a “work-bad, life-good” scenario. One definition of the noun use of work includes, a task or tasks to be undertaken; something a person or thing has to do. Alternatively, the definition […]

This week we celebrate the first landing on the Moon. Apollo 11 lifted off on July 16, 1969, landed on the Moon, July 20th. Six hours later Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot there. I remember it very well. I was at a Wisconsin lake home owned by friends of the family. […]