"Better Production" Is One of Our Better Productions

Almost every month, MMS runs a number of short articles about shop solutions—a cutting tool, a CNC machine, programming software, a workholding device or other product that has increased productivity, improved quality, cut costs or provided some other benefit to the end user. These articles appear in a section that has been called "Better Production" since October 1967. Before that date, this monthly collection of user success stories had other titles, but basically followed the same format. This makes it one of the “oldest” features of the magazine. It's also one of the best read, as readership studies have shown time after time. The articles, when archived on our website, continue to attract interest as online research material.

Whatever it is called, the perennial popularity of this section is attributable to several factors:

1. Shop people like to read about other shops. Even if the product mentioned has no applicability in the reader's shop, there is something to be learned about the kinds of problems other shops are up against and how they solved these problems with solutions from the marketplace.

2. A shop's experience has a lot of credibility. Who knows better than the end user what a difference a product makes in his or her application?

3. Technology is more understandable and easier to size up when presented in a real-world context. Relating product features to user benefits is often the best way to grasp the significance of these developments.

4. The consistent product-solving-problem format keeps the articles readable, to the point, and compelling.

The Better Production section of our latest issue, which is now in the mail, is a typical array of case histories. You can preview them here.