Companies Don’t Need to Lay People Off to Survive

How one CEO saved his 12,000-person company without a single layoff

Photo courtesy of Bob Chapman

When the financial crisis hit in 2008, Bob Chapman was faced with an impossible choice: lay off thousands of his workers, or go out of business. A few years prior, Barry-Wehmiller — a 125-year-old St. Louis-based manufacturing technology company — had publicly…