Well, I commend you on your persistence and you apparently have enough pride in your work to accomplish what you do with what you have.
That is what a Craftsman's skill is about.
It's a joy to combine good skill with new equipment. We are in the process of engineering a new line with equipment for product-specific manufacture of one of our products, rather than adapting the existing equipment, as we are now doing. We're having good results, but the effort can be more than necessary, and quite frankly, we have some individuals who won't ever be able achieve our quality objectives with existing equipment either because of skill(lack of) or the fact that they simply don't want to work that hard, and we have to relegate them to other tasks.
We've also had an influx of new-hires, and it simply remains to be seen where they stand in regards to skill/motivation. I imagine about one-third will be what I consider "good".
With the new equipment, we'll be able to significantly increase the output of this (very profitable) product without undue physical effort, and state of the art instrumentation will give some of the less-skilled a crutch.
The individuals who possess more skill and motivation will still out-perform their less motivated/skill co-workers, though.
