Stand up and be measured

Metrics: Industry Survey Seeks Participants

Editor?s note: the following article was written by Roger Klouda, president of MSI Mold Builders in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and was first published in the Mold Maker Journal. Roger is also executive editor of the Mold Maker Journal.

How much fun would it be to go to a football game if no one kept score? Gambling wouldn?t be much fun if they just pulled the winners out of a hat. Working on improving your golf game wouldn?t really matter if you didn?t know how the ?pros? score and you couldn?t track your progress and know you were getting better.

Our businesses are the same way. My father always says that you find out how good you are at the end of the year when the numbers come in. While that may be true, it is hard to know how they come to be what they are unless you are tracking the things important to the success of your business.

Once you know your own progress you start to wonder, how am I doing compared to the industry? Where do you find these numbers? Are there common numbers, generated in similar fashion, which I trust and believe in? If asked to assist in the generation of these numbers will I report my true numbers or what I think they should be? If I don?t truly understand what they are asking for, is it worth reporting?

Should I invest the time and money to get accurate data to compare my company to?

Jeff Mengel of Plante & Moran PLLC, a national accounting firm, has spent a lot of time developing surveys to extract the data from the mold making industry in order to provide us with data by which to judge our businesses. In the past this data collection was cumbersome and nearly took a CPA to fill out. Thus only a very small percentage of the industry contributed and was allowed to view the compiled data.

Recently I was fortunate to participate with a small group of mold makers who shared the same interests in getting this data. We worked with Jeff to reduce the time required to fill out the survey. We reduced the data collection instrument to only four pages and we believe with a little time and focus all the data required by the survey should be available to you on your current financial statements or standard records. At the very least only about an hour?s time with your bookkeeper/CPA would get this filled out.

Your investment will get you a number of things you don?t currently have that could be instrumental in driving the success of your company. How do you compare to your peers in the industry? How do you compare to others in your area of specialty- automotive, appliance etc. How is your efficiency? How does your on-time delivery compare? What are your sales per employee-manufacturing/total, sales per square foot of space? How do I compare to other operations that have similar sales to mine?

All this information can help you make better decisions. Should I get bigger/smaller as a business, build bigger/smaller molds, get into a different specialty, and specialize ? in what?

You enter the numbers and Plante & Moran does the entire calculating, etc. in total privacy. Your individual data is shared with no one.

Not only will you get the data you need, Jeff is developing some tools to allow you to plug your numbers in on a monthly basis, within your own company, to track your own progress and help you manage. This is given for participating in the survey.

Are you willing to make a small investment in your business? How differently would you act if you knew the real score?

Remember, if they didn?t keep score, the odds are the Cubs would have won the World Series at least once in the last century, if they only pulled names out of the hat to decide the winner.

To participate in the 2007 North American Plastics Industry Study, please visit http://plastics.plantemoran.com.