3 Legs of a stool
Good equipment has become the “ticket of entry” to compete in metal fabrication, but most owners know that equipment alone can’t make a fabricator successful. If you give the best people in the world an old, poorly maintained laser, punch, press brake, or welding system, you’ll have a shop full of talented, frustrated employees and, ultimately, frustrated customers. If you have the best machines in the world but don’t have talented people who can operate them and (just as important) communicate and sell the services those machines make possible, you still get frustrated employees and customers. It really boils down to three legs of a stool: people, processes, and technology. And you need all three.