Correspondence from loyal readers has increased significantly in the past few months. Thank you all for reading! One common theme in your telephone calls and e-mails is the need for engineering so-called "low-cost" tooling during these challenging times. "Do you have any experience designing low-cost tooling?" has been the popular question recently. This perceived need, unfortunately, will be short-lived as the die and stamping industry will return to good health. A manager I worked for in the 1980s once told me that certain trends in the die and stamping industry recur every decade or so and last for one or two years before going out of style. In times of growing sales revenue the typical management team makes economically bad decisions and then in lean times is replaced with a new management team that makes cost-saving decisions. At this point, the forgotten trends reappear, destined to become unfashionable when sales return. This cycle goes round and round.
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