Is there a plan in place at your company if a top employee, such as the president or owner dies? Episode five is the first in a new interview format on MakingChips. In this fifth episode, we talk to Stacey Bales about her story of taking over as President of Bales Mold Service (recently rebranded as Bales Metal Surface Solutions). The first reaction from the bank is “How are we going to liquidate?” Who takes over when multiple family members are involved and no succession plan has been setup? Major issues arise, such as trust among family members - when there is no succession plan, family members will fight out their new roles instead of moving into the proper roles right away. The family needs to establish that they are all on the same team and not out for themselves. “Be very transparent with the person that you believe is coming up.” The owner of every manufacturing company should be transparent about how they want to handle the succession of their company and have a vision about where they want the company to go. Stacey Bales is the 2nd generation owner and President of Bales Metal Surface Solutions. Bales provides engineered coating and finishes to mold makers and OEMs. They have locations in Illinois and Texas. In addition, Stacey is on the Board of Directors of the TMA (Technology and Manufacturing Association) and President of AESF (American Electro & Surface Finishers). In our Manufacturing News segment, we discuss a news article about the City of Atlanta. They are short on manufacturing skilled labor resulting in six figure incomes for certain positions. In our Metalworking Tools segment, we discuss Southwestern Industries (CNC Technology for Small Lot Machining). Southwestern machines are intended to produce small lots of parts, so you can go from programming to producing parts much quicker than traditional CNC lathes and mills with easy to use ProtoTRAK programming.