Sharpening the problem‐solving skills of aerospace engineers

Describes how Ladish Co. Inc., North America’s second largest forging company, has changed the approach its engineers use to solve problems. Aerospace constitutes approximately 85 per cent of Ladish’s sales and the cyclical nature of the industry forced the company to recognize the competitive shortcomings of focusing narrowly on technical issues. Today Ladish thoroughly scrutinizes the business impact of every technical decision ‐ and its engineers do so using a significantly different set of broad‐based assumptions than were commonly in use in the organization five years ago. The new problem‐solving methodology seems to be working. In 1998, Ladish posted its strongest financial performance in ten years.