In the case of our own facility, we were about 70 people when we started. We're now at about 100. We got better, we got more customer-focussed, and we got more business. We're the only facility in our division that added people in this time. There's a fallacy that it's about mindlessly cutting heads, and that just isn't the case. Not when done by people who know what they're doing.
Hank
I guess it's no wonder my post struck a chord with you... I'm a former (disabled now) six-sigma black belt, with a bit of ISO experience to boot.
More than once reading through this thread, I noticed I was thinking some of the same things you were posting.