Why am I Here

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Why am I Here

I have been here for about 1 ½ years and have seen a decline in business from 4 million annually with 40 – 50 employees to 1 ½ million in 2007 with 20 employees. The extremely despairing issues are that the overhead has not decreased in proportion. We have 6 family members, 2 engineers including myself, a receptionist, and a maintenance man on the payroll that is all overhead or non production. That is ½ of the employees but about ¾ of the payroll. Of the 10 people in the plant 2 are in the tool room (some of their time is paid production and some is non-paid tool maintenance) and 7-8 people in the plant that is in production, these are mostly Mexicans making an average of $7.00 hour and they have the burden of producing enough product to support the rest of us.

We are very top heavy but there is a problem. They are not going to let any of the family go and they need the rest of us to keep the plant running. Besides the out-of-proportion of overhead employees to production employees we have a large facility to maintain. No way can the sales be covering the overhead. Last year we lost (or didn’t get) a million dollar contract because of lack of organization. We now have a meeting pending with Batesville Casket Company that is another million dollar job. That are requiring the same quality requirements that we didn’t provide for the Ice Machine Company. We are preparing for another horse and pony show for them hoping that they don’t look in depth at how we really do thing. We received this e-mail laying out the meeting agenda. Again I am repeating myself but I have setup all that they are requiring but none has been put into action. They will eventuality have to make some hard decisions. I Hope that I can hold on until I am ready to leave for school. If we get Batesville then I will be secure till then. They will need me to get the design work done.