Archive for the ‘Global Marketplace’ Category

Oh, Canada

June 13th, 2013
By: Vicki Bell

After reading yesterday’s “Fabricating Update” e-newsletter, a reader from Brampton, Ontario, Canada, wrote to tell me how disappointed he was that Canada was not included in the news item about how difficult it is to find skilled workers globally.

Mexico’s  stats, which are nearly the same as the U.S.—38 percent and 39 percent respectively—were included, and he understood that, to a point: “I can see how Mexico fits in as your neighbor to the South … although Mexico would not seem likely to have a wealth of skills trade workers?”

Insulting the Mexican workforce aside, the reader had a point when he wrote, “I would think it would be a whole lot more relevant to mention Canada as we freely trade workers back and forth through the United Association.” (more...)

A race to the bottom

April 4th, 2013
By: Vicki Bell

“Wal Mart is the death knell for small business everywhere they open shop. Wal-Mart is good for small business in the same way amputation is a successful weight-loss program. Wal-Mart is killing America, and if you shopped there this week, here’s hoping the American job you just shipped overseas is yours!”

So reads a comment about the money.cnn.com article “The Wal-Mart economy’s big winners,” which focused on four small U.S. businesses that “hit the big one” by securing Wal-Mart orders. There are some lessons to be learned from each of these businesses, lessons that are as basic as any in business: Listen to the market; find a need and fill it; and be persistent. There also are lessons to be learned from the comments left for this article. But it doesn’t appear that these lessons are getting through. (more...)

A decade later, cautious optimism still applies

March 21st, 2013
By: Vicki Bell

ManpowerGroup has released its latest Employment Outlook Survey findings, which suggest that employers worldwide are seeking signs of a robust global economy before labor markets are likely to achieve sustainable traction.

Despite the recent stock market gains, thought by some to be a barometer of a healthier U.S. economy, more than enough uncertainty remains to keep many employers from hiring. And it doesn’t appear that these concerns will be assuaged anytime soon. (more...)

Mr. Bureaucracy, tear down this wall

February 12th, 2013
By: Tim Heston

This morning I talked with Paul Luber, CEO of Milwaukee-based Super Steel, a contract fabricator on a serious rebound. In 2010 the company went into receivership. Now, the fabricator recently has completed a serious growth spurt--it doubled revenue in just 12 months--and is preparing for 15 percent annual growth during the next few years. Look out of the story in the April FABRICATOR.

This shop is one of many I wish more journalists and government officials would learn about--and I’m talking about more than the grip-and-grin coverage, like the “Good American Job” stereotypical photo op we continually saw during the presidential campaign.

Milwaukee is a highly competitive area for metal fabrication. Workers have plenty of options, but, according to company sources, they choose Super Steel because of its competitive pay and benefits. And it’s an engaging place to work, one that continually focuses on product and process improvements.

And, oh yeah, the company also sends its products to Mexico and other so-called “low cost” countries.

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The real costs behind miscommunication

January 22nd, 2013
By: Tim Heston

At the last FABTECH® show, I ran into an engineer who works for GE Appliance & Lighting, looking for products that would speed that all-important art-to-part time--that all-important product-development time. Their comments make sense in light of recent growth of the company’s Louisville, Ky., Appliance Park. After years of decline, the massive industrial campus has njoyed a welcome rebound in recent years, as described in great detail by The Atlantic magazine last month.

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The competitive cluster in metal fabrication

December 13th, 2012
By: Tim Heston

A recent Wall Street Journal article pointed out the strength of U.S. manufacturing when it comes to--get ready for the technical jargon--“big stuff.” By that the Journal reporter meant mining equipment and heavy machinery.

Economist Chris Kuehl pointed out this fact in a recent edition of Fabrinonics, an e-newsletter from the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association Intl. Both Kuehl and the Journal article brought up the benefits of “clusters,” a group of like companies in highly collaborative supply chains. Taiwan has it for semiconductors. We’ve got it for extremely heavy equipment, like mining trucks.

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Spreading the word about manufacturing beyond the choir

August 15th, 2012
By: Vicki Bell

Have you read the article “A moral argument for manufacturing?” If you haven’t, please do, and if you agree with the author’s premise that the only way to really change the landscape for manufacturing in the U.S. is to bring the moral argument for its existence to the collective consciousness, then please share this article with others.

I spoke with the article's author, Jim O’Leary, yesterday. We had a nice chat about his article, the business he works for, and how much faith he has in this country’s ability to right its manufacturing ship. (more...)

Will Olympic uniform outrage be the catalyst for change?

July 19th, 2012
By: Vicki Bell

By now, the U.S. Olympic CommitteeRalph Lauren, and you probably have heard much about the U.S. Olympic athletes’ official uniforms, and I don’t mean their style. A July 12 report on the ABC program World News Tonight featured a look at the uniforms designed by Ralph Lauren and made—head-to-toe—in China.

Most of the feedback to the online report on abcnews.go.com was negative. So was the feedback from “Stamping News Brief” subscribers responding to the last week’s newsletter that featured the ABC report. (more...)

Metal fabrication, patent pending

June 26th, 2012
By: Tim Heston

Welders and other workers at The Roberts Co. in Winterville, N.C.--part of this year’s FAB 40 list of successful contract fabricators--are used to signing secrecy agreements from customers. Dave Staskelunas, the company’s vice president of fabrication services, said that more and more customers are requiring workers to keep quiet as they weld and form proprietary materials or designs. These designs aren’t patented, either. The risk of someone else coming out with the idea is probably less than someone outright stealing it during the drawn-out patent application process.

As a recent Bloomberg article aptly put it, the U.S. patent system “gives inventors a limited monopoly on their ideas in exchange for revealing them to the world so that others can build on them.”

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Manufacturing and U.S. competitiveness

June 13th, 2012
By: Vicki Bell

You may have read or heard something today about how the world views the U.S. The Pew Research Center has released its Global Attitudes Survey findings, and pundits have been quick to jump on and analyze the results, particularly as they relate to this year’s presidential contest and the two main candidates’ interpretations of where things stand. 

Among the coverage is an article attributed to Bruce Stokes, director of the Pew Research Center’s Global Economic Attitudes and published on cnn.com. Stokes presents the findings as they stack up to claims by both President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney about America’s world standing. He conjectures that both are right and both are wrong.

I’ll leave it to you to read the article to learn about Obama’s and Romney’s views and decide for yourself who is more right (if it’s possible to be more right). What I want to focus on is the portion of the report that deals with the worldview of U.S. competitiveness. (more...)