in the spirit of its old slogan, "pioneers in steel technology", it invested heavily in new technologies. workers/supervisors often did not know how to get the full potential from the machines. as such, mclouth bore not only high costs to implement, but additional losses from lack of optimization. some also cite aging and incorrectly-sized equipment, along with low employee morale/productivity in the 1980s to mid-1990s. the subsequently-lowered quality of steel also created reputation problems.