Improvements
By Dr. Selim Erhan, TLT Editor | TLT From the Editor August 2026
Improvements, maintenance and precautions are three equally important foundations for day-to-day operations.
I recently bought a dresser from a well-known put-it-together-yourself manufacturer. It had been a while since I had put together a large piece of furniture, but I had put together many pieces of furniture from this manufacturer in the past. In fact, some of the pieces had been put together twice when I had discovered that I had installed a key piece upside down. They were not happy memories but had built experience. Now that I had more time on my hands, I gladly took on the project.
As I started putting the pieces together, I was amazed at the improvements that had been made. There was no need to nail anything, no need to guess what the picture meant! The improvements that had been made were many and quite significant.
At times like this one remembers the amount of work that goes into every aspect of all activities. The equipment, tools and technology that once were the best fall behind with new findings and ingenuity. The formulas that once were suitable need to be revised. Companies need to invest and budget for these inevitable changes. We in the metalworking industry must deal with issues such as working with stronger, harder alloys, higher fluid pressures and loss of certain additives due to new regulations and toxicity findings.
The time and money spent on these improvements are in fact well spent because they will be much appreciated by the end-users. Even if we don’t immediately benefit from improvements we have made in our industry we still will benefit from improvements made in other industries.
Improvements, however, are only one of the legs of a three-legged stool that we sit on. There is another leg that represents maintenance. In the last years there have been significant changes in how companies view maintenance, especially predictive maintenance. New technologies allow operators to detect issues with much greater sensitivity. We can avoid problems that were undetectable even a few years ago.
Then, there is a broader set of problems that need to be monitored. I believe the third leg that our well-being depends on is to cast a wider net of precautions. Problems that seem unrelated to our daily jobs can affect us and destroy everything we built with so much hard work and ingenuity. This situation is similar to the issues with driving. We prepare for our journey, planning what we may need, while driving we pay attention to the direction we are going. That is the first leg. The second leg is maintenance where we take care of our vehicles to avoid problems. Then there is a third leg, equally important, where we also keep an eye on other vehicles around us or behind us as we drive. Is there someone coming fast? Is there a dangerous, erratic driver behind us? A truck with an open back and full of equipment that is in front of us?
The importance of paying attention to each one of these sections can be easily seen if we look at societies. Many advanced civilizations reaching comfortable levels have relaxed their guard, assuming nothing will happen to a vast strong empire and ignore issues that time and again caused the collapse of each one of these great, powerful and very rich empires that existed before them. If human behavior can collapse such vast and powerful empires, it surely can affect a company, a manufacturing site or even a unit as small as a family. Therefore, I believe that all three groups of precautions are equally important during expansions, growths and choosing and handling systems as well as day-to-day operational decisions.
Dr. Selim Erhan is president of Erbur Solutions in Trout Valley, Ill. You can reach him at selim.erhan@outlook.com.