Don't be bearish; attack your problem

Let it not be said that I wasn"t paying attention in church on Sunday. Check out this golden piece of wisdom from Rev. Victor A. Scantlebury, assistant bishop of the Diocese of Chicago:


A guy skipped church one Sunday to go hunting. He was out and about on a beautiful day when he turned a corner and literally ran into a bear.



The collision sent the hunter tumbling down a hillside. He lost possession of his rifle right before he came to rest on some rocks. The fall left him with two injured legs, so he had no means of escaping his situation.



The need for escape was necessary because the bear was slowly working his way down the hill. Obviously the bear was not simply going to nose around and inquire about the health of his hunting friend.



The hunter looked up to the heavens and said, Lord, please make this bear a Christian to better the situation I find myself in. If you do, I promise I"ll never miss church on a Sunday again.



As the bear walked downhill toward the hunter, a miracle occurred. It stood on its two massive hind legs, dropped to
its knees, put its front paws together, and said, Lord, thank you for this meal that you have made possible. Amen.



We"ve all been in a similar situation where we think a resolution makes sense, but it just doesn"t work out that way. I remember the time early in my marriage when I bought my wife a portable vacuum cleaner for our anniversary
after she spent an evening complaining about the need to drag out our vacuum cleaner to clean up minor messes. How
was I to know I wasn"t supposed to purchase appliances for her for anniversaries, birthdays, or holidays? That
wasn"t covered in the premarital courses we took at the Catholic church where we got married.



Not getting the end result you expect happens all the time. John Tatman, production manager, Maurer Manufacturing, Spencer, Iowa, experienced something like that. Maurer
Manufacturing is a very diverse fabricator of agricultural equipment and trailers. The company purchased a new Alltra plasma cutting table about a year ago, and meanwhile it was operating a
Cincinnati laser as well. Instead of ramping up operators on a
totally new software package for just the plasma cutting table, Maurer Manufacturing decided to commit to a new
nesting program that could work with both the laser and plasma cutting machines. A software demonstration convinced

Tatman and his team that the software would do everything necessary to get the job done.



Three months into the implementation, however, the software was coming up short. It couldn"t save multiple nests to
one master program. What was originally envisioned didn"t happen.



Luckily, Maurer Manufacturing found a software vendor that helped them get back on track very quickly. (You"ll be able to read more about this story in the June issue of The FABRICATOR.) Fortunately, I learned that jewelry
makes up for past episodes of bad gift-giving. Thankfully, bears with good manners and a taste for humans exist only
in jokes.