I really like my job--but not in a corny sense. I don’t wake up and immediately whistle away in gleeful anticipation of the workday. Some days I feel I can’t write another word, while other days I type several pages before I realize that what I just wrote is either unintelligible or just plain awful.
What keeps me typing away is a sense of ownership. It’s my job to call contacts, develop story ideas, research technical information, interview experts, and write the story. I don’t work alone, of course. Throughout the process I work with editors, copy editors, and graphic artists--and one thing we share is a sense of ownership. The FABRICATOR and its sister publications represent our brand, our identity.
It’s not practical for all of us to shepherd products from beginning to end, of course. We would be at a loss trying to run a printing press, for instance. But we do monitor product quality through multiple stages of production, and it’s that sense of ownership that makes me happy about going to work.
Last week I got my first taste of a new kind of manufacturing cell, and immediately I saw how ownership played a role. Milwaukee-based Phoenix Products makes lighting fixtures for a variety of commercial customers. It’s a high-mix, low-volume environment. SKUs number in the thousands.
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