Dilemma and Decision -------------------- Engine Trouble Demand is patchy. Profits from successful projects disappear during the gaps between them. Bjorn Erik Strand is tired. Fifteen years ago he founded BEST Services in Trondheim, 350 kilometres from the Arctic Circle. With a staff of 25, BEST supplies automation systems to the Norwegian process industries. As everywhere, these have been hurt by the recession. But BEST's problems run deeper. It cannot avoid the feast-or-famine nature of project engineering to which it is tied, and resource planning for a small company is difficult. Strand feels growing frustration at his team's inability to move quickly enough to seize new opportunities outside the mainstream Business. After a series of losses he is contemplating selling up and starting afresh, supplying farming technology to eastern Europa. He tries with his colleagues to analyse BEST'S strengths and weaknesses, but no clear solutions emerge. Largely for historical reasons, the company is divided into three - the automation systems supplier, BEST Services; Trondheim Engineering, a joint venture with Thorvald Hansen, an experienced engineer, which offers related engineering services; and BEST Programming, a two-year-old subsidiary that develops software for automation systems. `Sales of automation systems have been falling year after year,' Strand complains to Hansen and Eva Larsen, the finance director, `yet when we see fresh opportunities in other parts of the process industry, we move too slowly. Everyone works in the same building, but when we need co-operation to secure an order, nothing happens.' Hansen points out that the margins on Trondheim Engineering's projects are good, and that it makes sense to put all the group's efforts into completing them an time. But everything stops for them,' Strand cuts in. `BEST Programming has got two powerful new products, but we can't tap all the markets to which they appeal.' Larsen is hardly more constructive than the other two. She explains that the group is losing the money made on Trondheim's projects during the gaps between them, and that it is earning almost nothing from the new software because executives are concentrating an their own products. The result: Overall loss for the past two years. Strand is aware that morale among his executives has sunk dangerously low amid fears about jobs. Meanwhile, the communication problem grows worse. Perhaps he will sell up after all.