Among the headlines on msnb.com today was one that stood out as some very positive news for manufacturing: 'Manufacturing companies returning to U.S.' The linked article title, “Surging China costs forces some U.S. manufacturing companies back home," had me fist pumping a la Maria Sharapova at Wimbledon.
The article began by describing a recent morning at Master Lock's 90-year-old factory in Milwaukee where "a cluster of machinery was whirring, every 2 seconds spitting out one of the combination locks used by American high schoolers as the company readied for the back-to-school rush.
"The seven-day-a-week, three-shift-per-day whirlwind of activity marked a change from two years ago, when the machine normally ran for just a few hours a day because the unit of Fortune Brands Inc. was ordering more padlocks from suppliers in China instead of making them."
Why the turnaround?
Efficiency reportedly was the primary reason for moving production from the world's low-cost workshop back to a unionized U.S. factory where wages are six times higher than in China. "The machine in Milwaukee is about 30 times as fast as the Chinese factories the company had been buying from, more than making up for the difference in wages."
Quoted in the article was Bob Rice, a senior vice president at Master Lock, who said, "I can manufacture combination locks in Milwaukee for less of a cost than I can in China."
This factory has added about 78 workers over the past few years and now has a workforce of 440. The article suggested that this is "a small bit of good news for the long-suffering U.S. manufacturing sector, which shed about 2 million jobs, or some 14.6 percent of its employees, in the last recession. It has not recovered since and now employs 11.7 million people, down 34,000 from the recession’s official end in June 2009."
The article also mentioned General Electric Co. and Boeing Co. as other companies boosting production at U.S. factories. Among the reasons cited for driving the shift were "rising wages in parts of Asia, surging fuel prices, and the complexity of transporting goods across the Pacific."
Whether moving jobs back home from China, initiating new production, or ramping up to handle increased business, companies across the U.S. are adding workers.
Alcoa's aerospace hub in the Quad Cities, the setting for President Obama's Tuesday speech on manufacturing jobs, has hired 237 workers since December, reported the desmoinesregister.com. "We're very successful right now," said Joe Hesse, plant finishing manager, who supervises work on the thick sheets of aluminum that make airplane wings, railroad cars, ship hulls and gas containers.
As reported on daytondailynews.com, Dayton Progress Corp., West Carrollton, Ohio, "has hired more people lately than it has in decades—about 100 in the past year—and plans to hire more as orders continue to climb."
Robert Hedrick, marketing director who has been with the company for 41 years, was quoted as saying, "I’ve never seen hiring like this."
Alliant Techsystems Inc. has nearly finished its $100 million aircraft component manufacturing plant in Clearfield, Utah. The plant, which will serve as the headquarters for ATK Aerospace Structures, is expected to create about 800 high-paying jobs over the next 20 years and generate almost $1 billion in wages.
Work is coming back, factories are hiring, and I'm primed to fist pump every time I hear one of these small bits of good news. Taking lessons from the tennis pros.
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About the Author: Vicki Bell
My past starting in the late 1960 in the petroleum industry in the design and installation of gas plants for the Industrial and utility user. Products used for high pressure Gas had to be of high quality and accountability to the manufacturer of such products. This principal of quality is used in the Oil Field Industry and in the HVAC Industry. Now as project manager in the Construction of Industrial and Commercial projects, I see product failure never experience before with products produced in the USA. Now with products from the Far East ( China, Taiwan, Korea, India ) the product failure is consistent. The stringed industry controls, state and federal as we have known in the USA, due not exist in the counties were the essence of cheap labor, cheap manufacturing and send it to the USA so that the US Corporation have maximum profit and Wall Street celebrates. The US Manufacturers simply due not control product quality in those foreign lands, and if they claim they are, that is a lei. Shame on the Corporation and shame on the politics supporting foreign lands taking away from the American Workers and flooding the market with cheap crap forcing us to use inferior materials.
Fred, you should have written your comment in Word then exported it here. I don't think I've seen that many spelling errors since highschool.
As to the article. I work in the Quality Control industry and often with Asian manufacturers. Companies hire mine to train, inspect, and implement quality control programs for industry. I'll give you a quick senario:
Company X hires me to train Chicom Inc. in Taiwan. I go to Taiwan and teach Chicom Inc.s Quality Control Dept. and employees how to properly weld a pressure vessel or a hydraulic cylinder. I leave Chicom Inc. confident that I did a good job and Company X will be happy with my work. Three months go by and Company X calls me and says "the quality of the product from Chicom Inc just took a dive, could you please return to Taiwan and find out what is happening?" I return to Chicom and find that while away Chicom Inc. has gained many more customers and decided that they should outsource Company X's work to another Taiwanese company. Of course Chicom Inc. never bothered to inform the outsource company of the importance of following QC standards and SOP's. Now, if Company X has any brain at all, it will bring manufacturing back to the states, preferably in a state with out onerous regulation or out of hand Unions.