[RKDinOKC]

Seems to me non-english speaking managers might be an improvement.

When I was in charge of all the literature I put together a system that all you had to do was update a products specs in a Filemaker database and it would automatically update all the literature web/print/pdf where that spec was used and email out notices to distributors and customers that subscribe to the updates list. And took only one person to keep the literature up-to-date.

The new IT guy replaced my system with custom programming 3 guys have been working on 3 years. It is all separated out. The guys making the changes make change to spec database, then update each place in the literature in Indesign and create PDFs themselves. Then they distribute the updated PDFs to all the different places it is stored or distributed from. It now takes four people well versed in our product, Indesign and Acrobat. Not only did my system take less people, but only required 1 license of Indesign and Acrobat to make the changes since a computer did it. It also had only one place to enter changes so there were less instances for someone to make a mistake in making the changes or distributing the literature.

He didn't like my system because it used a Mac and Filemaker to track everything and Applescript to do all the work. He said it was not enterprise hardware or software.

Oh yeah, and the notices my system sent out sent a pdf with a description of the changes for each piece of literature. The new one just sends links you can download the pages that changed in the past week and there is NO information on what was changed or why.

It's this kind of improvements these people are doing that is making it so difficult to make a profit in these lean times. Also very frustrating and glad I work from home so I don't have to see it. Sure hope it doesn't mean I am going to lose my job in the family company.

Oh no, Interestingly enough while writing this I got a notice where we are about to lose our ISO 9001 certification that evaluates the processes to guarantee our product specs, literature, and products themselves all match up. It is required for sales to many companies.

Have been told "It's not what you say, or how you say it, but you make people feel stupid."