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92 MMS April 2017 mmsonline.com FEATURE low end of the size range will spend roughly three-fourths as much as companies with 100 or more employees. Some interesting findings about service to the automotive industr y arise from our latest Top Shops benchmarking sur vey, which seeks to identify the specific practices or strategies that leading shops share. About 94 percent of the participants in this annual sur vey are contract manufacturers or job shops. A look at a table (page 91) from the profile information of these p a r t i c i p a n t s ( n e a r l y 3 5 0 s h o p p r i n c i p l e s ) shows that one-third of them are involved in some ser vice to the automotive industr y. The point here is that a lot of work is being done for the automotive industr y by small- to medium- size companies. Perhaps more significant is that companies identified as Top Shops tend to be less involved in automotive than other shops sur veyed. In 2016, about 26 percent of the Top Shop group identified automotive as a "business primarily ser ved," whereas the figure for other shops is close to 35 percent. Top Shops also tend to be more involved in aerospace (44 percent) than the other shops (slightly more than 35 percent). This suggests that aerospace attracts and/or demands a commitment to a high level of tech- nological capability and the keen management skills that go with it. That said, there is no impli- cation that automotive work is any less worthy of technological or management prowess, or that it faces challenges any less demanding. The fact is that the automotive industry does have a large appetite for high volumes of simpler parts that fit well in the production portfolio of many job shops. Every industry is seeking suppliers that strive for top performance by adopting best practices, investing boldly in technology and nurturing an able workforce. Having the technology capabil- ity of top shops engaged more fully in automotive manufacturing has a "rightness" that should be fulfilled. Search Machines Smarter. Machining Center Drill/Tap Boring Mill Milling Machine Machine Type: The Machine Tool Search Engine SOURCE: Hwacheon techspex.com IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: