Many companies have a mentality to keep everything in-house: buy more equipment, hire more employees, find a larger building. They think they are mining gold when they could be digging their graves.
Every company I have worked for had this push to try and tackle every job themselves and then turn around and outsource companies for efficiency training, luncheons, team building, etc. They never asked if their equipment was suited for the tasks. Never asked what difficulties would be faced for particular jobs. They only focused on throwing people and money at jobs without consideration towards employee abilities and equipment. They stepped over a dollar to save a penny.
In my opinion, they should have considered each task, employee ability, and equipment available. If only one employee has the ability to handle a job, that job is not worth the hassle. Employees are a commodity which can disappear; hinging jobs on any one employee will eventually lead to disaster. Finding or building a skilled employee is not as easy as previous years. Machinists are disappearing faster than their replacements can arrive. Better pay, less stress, and physical demand are really common reasons to lose your machinists now-a-days.
A better way to handle productivity in this newly emerging world is to find capable machinist companies and outsource all your troubles. Outsourcing can save costs across the board. Less employees, lower insurance, less utilities and building costs, all the things that prompted the “virtual” stores to exist are still true today. The less your company needs hands-on with a product, the more product can be pushed through.
Pass the difficult work to companies who thrive on having the skilled talent. Making a small profit while passing on the stress should be the easiest decision to make.