Editor's Message: How Often Do You Think

The primary mission of SBC Magazine is to connect with component manufacturers (CMs) from across the country and share their best practices and lessons learned. Of course, the biggest challenge in that effort is identifying the timely struggles of one group of CMs and then finding the CM who has developed a best practice to solve it.

One approach we hope will help is bringing back weekly industry polls. Our goal is to gather more information from the component industry at large and quickly hone in on potential challenges. We want to find out what issues CMs are currently mired in, learn all the ways those obstacles are overcome, and then share industry-wide best practices.

We know your time is limited and valuable, so these online polls are succinct and will typically take less than 60 seconds to complete. The weekly poll will be included in SBC Industry News right below the top headlines and will also be sent to you directly via email. The more responses we receive, the better we are able to identify those who are in need and those who might have solutions.

Two recent polls focused on workforce development practices and provide great examples. The first poll asked the simple question, “do you currently offer internships at your company?” Out of 113 respondents (which is a good sample size but 200 would be even better), two-thirds indicated they don’t offer internships. When drilling down into their reasons why they don’t, 44 percent said they had never considered it before. 

While a few respondents said the poll questions themselves were encouraging them to now consider how they could offer internships, the results of the poll confirm to us we need to cover the subject of industry-specific internships more often. As a starting point, we have a story about how a recent Big C Lumber intern has become an effective recruiter for the company (digital edition page 10).

Another poll sought more information about how CMs conduct plant tours with students. While 78 percent indicated they host one or more plant tours with students each year, what was more interesting was that out of the 22 percent who don’t give students tours, half hadn’t even considered it. This is a strong indication we haven’t explored student plant tours enough either. Look for an article on that topic in the April issue.

Again, participation in these online polls provides invaluable insight into the component manufacturing industry. Even if all you have to spare is two seconds to answer the very first yes or no question in a poll, that alone gives weight to understanding the trend we are trying to measure. Help us in our efforts to continually improve the value of the information we publish for you.