Friday, 25 September 2026The Weekly Edition · No. 38
Business, money and the people running both.
A family-owned precision engineer in the Midlands now makes a third of its parts with the lights off.
At six each evening, the last of Harlow Precision’s machinists sets up the overnight jobs and goes home. By morning, a third of the week’s parts are finished, inspected and stacked.
The third-generation firm spent £1.2m on automation over four years. It has not cut a single job; it has taken on work it used to turn away.
The robots didn’t replace anyone. They replaced the orders we used to say no to.
Forget the moonshots. The owners getting real returns started with one boring question: where do we retype things?
Three studios, one question: what happens when you stop billing by the hour and start competing on the work itself?
After a decade of growth at any cost, small-company balance sheets are filling up. The reason is not fear — it’s leverage.
