The world is chaotic, but also brims with opportunity

With change, we’re told, come opportunity and growth. With rapid change, we can burst through inertia and old ways of thinking, and we can realize significant progress. 

At least that’s what people say. 

Yvette Connor is a risk advisory practice leader for the CohnReznick Advisory LLC, which works with companies to confront challenges like supply chain disruptions and tariffs.

To her, this is no time to sit idle. It’s time for planning, and action. 

“I think the biggest opportunity for your client ... is to be strategically proactive,” she said, during a discussion that centered around the possibility of tariff refunds but that quickly veered into dealing with change. 

It is happening all around us. Artificial intelligence and chatbots — technologies I never thought about five years ago — have become so ubiquitous, you have to question every non-in-person communication exchange you have. Is the person on the other line human? Am I? 

The plastics industry isn’t unique in dealing with uncertainty, but there’s plenty to go around. 

Just as the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one set of tariffs in February, President Trump imposed another. Rates, like resin prices, fluctuate, due to forces outside any control you or I might exert. 

In Europe, companies lament that economic conditions actually are worse than in the States.

At his company’s Technology Days, Tobias Baur, managing director of sales and aftersales for Arburg, sounded downbeat in comments through a translator: “We are still in a phase of far-reaching and geopolitically profound developments, but also local political influences that prevent an economic recovery.” 

Mike Greenberg, the resin expert I spoke to just as Iran began its blockade of the Strait, was even more ominous in his assessment of the situation on the continent.

“Europe has shut down a lot of its capacity. ... They've kind of been committing economic suicide, especially for our industry, in petrochemicals. ... They impose rules and restrictions upon themselves, hoping that other people would also, but they don't,” said Greenberg, CEO of The Plastics Exchange.

If the news seems dire, it might help to remember the big picture. 

Six years ago, facing a different, unprecedented crisis, machinery makers and processors stepped up in a big way, against big odds, to deliver essential goods — including health-care products — at a time when much of the rest of the economy was basically shuttered. 

The urgency or reason to push through now might feel different, but if you’re looking for someone who has some good thoughts on the topic, don’t miss this month’s In Other Words. 

"Ultimately, we're only here for a short time, and our legacy is really just how we're making a difference for other people. Our interactions, words we're sharing, ways we're helping and assisting, that's the only legacy I'm going to leave, is if I made a difference for anybody,” said Ken Shuman, president of Shuman Plastics. 

While living in poverty, his grandfather, an immigrant from Ukraine, started the endeavor that became the Shuman business by salvaging rags and metal scrap to support his family. 

Nearly 80 years later, Shuman Plastics provides recycled resins, and through its Dyna-Purge brand, purging compounds. It employs nearly 40 people, and is active in the Buffalo, N.Y. community, where Philip Shuman built a life in a neighborhood of other new Americans. 

It's a classic American tale of progress emerging from hardship. “Going green” — a cliche for our times — surely wasn't on Philip Shuman’s mind at the time. His goal was survival. 

As Connor reminded me last month, opportunity and uncertainty go together. Doing what you’ve aways done probably won’t get you where you need to go.

With Big Data and AI, you have the tools now to make it happen. 

“There's always opportunity in there. Always. Somehow, some way, it's hard to not find something you could do differently that can make the situation better or help you do more of a good thing,” she said. “You just have to find it.”