Dealing With Job Shops

 As someone who has been trying to make a go of running a job shop... I wish I had written this!!

Working With Job-Shops

You can’t build everything yourself. Life is too short to get all the skills, tools and judgement needed to do every part of whatever it is you’re working on. This shouldn’t be a surprise – you probably grow little of your own food, didn’t build your home, don’t educate your kids or even repair your own boots. You rely on specialists – and most of the time you hardly consider how much trust you are placing in the judgement and skill of people you don’t know. I know I don’t!

But when it comes to work – and things you are passionate about – it gets harder to blindly rely on the judgement of others. Experts aren’t so much more expert than you – and there’s so much riding on every decision. When you hire somebody to help you build prototypes or manufacture your products, you are putting your success in their hands. You’ve got to have a good relationship – and that means thinking about the process from their perspective. You’ll need to know what you want – and what they want. The more you know, the more likely the relationship will be successful.

This article is about my opinions on how to best deal with the process of outsourcing specialized work to other companies. I have been on both sides of this many times and ran my own job-shop for the better part of a decade. You could summarize this whole article by saying: “Be clear about what you need, ask for advice when you don’t know, expect some complications, communicate persistently, pay when you should – and don’t be an a-hole.” This is just my opinion – I hope it helps you out.

If if feels like I am taking the “side” of the job-shop, that’s because this article is about developing a better understanding their world. Maybe I’ll write one someday on “how to run a job-shop” – but all the same advice will apply from the other side.

 read the article here:

https://explorecomposites.com/articles/business/working-with-job-shops/