Consultant Harbour steers clients to success

As Plastics Machinery & Manufacturing turns 10, we're looking back at 10 people who made significant contributions to the industry during the past decade. Read more of our 10 People for 10 Years here.

By Karen Hanna

Laurie Harbour knows your business.  

As a consultant for more than 35 years, she has been in thousands of manufacturing plants around the world — including molding and mold making facilities, many in the automotive industry.  

In a manufacturing world that’s increasingly competitive, she remains ever-bullish about American manufacturing. 

But she acknowledges there’s work to do. 

“Companies are certainly not as efficient as they should be," she said in a Plastics Machinery & Manufacturing (PMM) Q&A last year. “They miss opportunities to eliminate waste and drive improvement in their business and overall throughput.” 

The daughter of Jim Harbour, the founder of Harbour Results Inc., Laurie Harbour served as the company’s president starting in 2005. In the spring, Wipfli LLP acquired the Southfield, Mich., firm, which focuses on small and medium-sized manufacturers.  

In “Tradition Meets Transformation: Leadership Strategies to Revitalize Manufacturing.” which Harbour co-authored, she warns that North American manufacturers must do more to keep pace with rapid changes in competition, economics and technology. The book explores five key topics — operations, labor, commercial strategies, vision and strategy, and technology. 

Harbour encourages clients to focus on what they can control, as she told PMM in a 2021 conversation about the pressures mold makers must confront. 

 “You control everything inside the four walls of your building, how you process the tool, how much labor you use to do it. … I get that you don’t control price, but you do have an input into that by being better at what you do. … You can still be better,” she said.