It used to be just labor cost, but apparently Mexico has another secret weapon in trying to expand its role as the world's manufacturing partner: It can churn out engineering and manufacturing talent for the large multinational manufacturers looking to locate in North America.
Don't believe it? Look what's happening elsewhere in the world. Read the rest of this entry »
If the headlines from a week ago are to be believed, Congress got its act together and cobbled together a last-minute deal to avoid sending the U.S. economy off the fiscal cliff. Needless to say, I don’t believe it. Yes, superficially, the new legislation prevented the U.S. economy from becoming the equivalent of a high-speed train wreck. However, it didn’t deal with the broad, deep, fundamental problems that are weakening the foundation of the U.S. economy. We have the same problems we had before this legislation passed, and the U.S. economy will eventually go off the rails. It won’t be sudden. It will play out like a painfully slow train wreck. Rather than a couple dozen freight cars piling up in a matter of seconds, it will take a decade or two, but it will happen nonetheless. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s a New Year, and we escaped falling off the fiscal cliff, thanks to the very last-minute, drama-laden efforts of Congress to pass a bill to avert a much-portended catastrophe. In fact, if you went to bed too early on New Year’s Eve, which I apparently did, you fell asleep thinking we were going over the edge. It wasn’t until the next morning when I fired up my computer that I learned about the bill passing the Senate and awaiting House approval.
The bill covers a lot of ground, and yesterday’s “Fabricating Update” e-newsletter attempted to cover a few highlights that affect fabricators, both personally and from a business standpoint. And then, as we always do, we asked readers to share their thoughts about the topic. Read the rest of this entry »
Early last year, I recall eating lunch in the break room at Atlanta-based Metcam, which hosted a press brake training seminar run by Steve Benson and organized by the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association. Sitting across from me was a press brake supervisor, we chatted a bit about his tours of duty in both Afghanistan and Iraq. He told me some intense stories.
He had gotten a job at a local metal fabricator and had climbed the ladder quickly. His military training, it seems, helped. He could focus. He paid attention to detail. He showed up to work like clockwork, and he was totally engaged in company’s improvement processes. To me, he sounded like a model employee. This is why I wasn’t surprised when I read an article in Forbes describing this as a trend that may abate, at least to some extent, our country’s skilled labor crisis.
In 2009 and 2010, I offered a little tongue-in-cheek look at current issues in December blog posts—one a parody of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and the other, a really lame take on “Let it Snow.”
This year, I was motivated by Alvin and the Chipmunks to revive this holiday exercise to the tune of their Grammy-award-winning song “Christmas Don’t Be Late.” My apologies to Alvin, Simon, Theodore, and Ross Bagdasarian, Jr. (a.k.a. David Seville). None to Congress. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s difficult to write today. The events of last Friday, Dec. 14, continue to weigh on my mind and the minds of everyone I know. Looking at all the sweet faces of innocent young children and those brave souls who tried to protect them is almost unbearable. You can’t do so without thinking of your own loved ones and wondering “what if?”
There’s much discussion now about gun control and laws—understandably so—but there also needs to be a real discussion about how to help the many people in our country who suffer some form of mental illness, such as the young shooter who perpetrated this horrific act. Read the rest of this entry »
When I visit a contract metal fabricator, often the focus really isn’t about the metal parts or the fancy machinery. It’s about co-workers, who often happen to be family members. Some aren’t blood relatives, but they might as well be. There’s a real sense of community at these shops. I’ve met brothers as business partners, married couples as entrepreneurs. Something about these close working environments grounds people.
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.
"They've tried for two years to find my replacement, but they didn't find one yet," said 67-year-old Gil Smith, a second-shift welding technician for Rose City Manufacturing, Springfield, Ohio.
He shared that fact with me after saying that he had read the December edition of the Fabricating Update e-newsletter where I mentioned that metal fabricators need to keep older workers around because companies simply aren't prepared to have all of that valuable knowledge walk out the door permanently to enjoy retirement. It's not that workers can't be found and trained to operate the machines and systems; it's the fact that those workers won't know what to do if faced with unforeseen circumstances that prevent them from operating the same machine and systems they were trained to operate. They simply don't have the experience. Read the rest of this entry »
Recently, my fellow blogger Tim Heston published a post that cited a New York Times article from November about how entry level pay in manufacturing is waning. The article quoted a Boston Consulting Group report that actually questioned the skilled labor crisis: "Trying to hire high-skilled workers at rock-bottom rates is not a skills gap."
Past posts on The Fabricator blog have addressed wages, which appear to vary from region to region and company to company. And, just as Heston noted, welders and fabricators at both ends of the pay scale let us know what they are seeing regarding wages. Such was the case when I posted a link to Heston's blog on The FABRICATOR's Facebook page. Read the rest of this entry »
