10 burning questions for metal fabricators and shop owners

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We journalists get it pounded into our heads early: Ask good questions.

Of course, even the most educated, open-ended inquiry can’t penetrate the mental fog of your typical high school athlete:

“So, what’s it like to beat your school’s archrival by 38 points in the playoffs?”

“Good.”

Note to self: Submit Burger King application tomorrow.

Normally, though, good and thoughtful questions get you where you want to go, whether it’s covering football for the local paper or polling the readers of a trade journal covering an ever-changing yet well-established sector of metal fabrication.

Speaking of which, we’d like to pose a few questions to you, both to get a feel for the current priorities of our readership and to understand better how you are dealing with the multiple market forces challenging your businesses.

So, in no particular order, here are the Top 10 Things We’d Like to Know About You. Please provide as many answers, in as much detail, as you can, and send them to lbrunner@thefabricator.com. We will publish your answers as a letter to the editor or in a follow-up article at a later date. Please let us know if you’d like your feedback kept anonymous:

1. What’s the greatest barrier to your profitability right now, and why?
2. From an economic perspective, what reasons do you have for optimism right now? What dark clouds do you see now or on the horizon?
3. What technological innovation has benefited you the most in the past two years? How and why?
4. What steps have you taken in the past one or two years to attract and retain quality workers?
5. Has your company recently reshored any jobs that were being done overseas? If so, how many, why, and how is that working out for you?
6. How much has overseas competition affected your business? How so?
7. What end-use markets are the most exciting ones to be involved with right now, and why?
8. Why do you think metal fabrication is still a viable career option?
9. What’s the best thing about working in metal fabrication or running a metal fab business? What’s the most difficult?
10. How can TPJ better serve you, the reader, in the future?

I’m looking forward to reading your thoughts. Thanks for your loyal readership. I hope we can serve you for years and years to come.