Posts Tagged ‘U.S. manufacturing’

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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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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...)

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Manufacturing expansion to press ahead

May 25th, 2012
By: Dan Davis

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is being a buzz-kill.

The nonpartisan government agency that watches the cost of legislative action reported this week that if the President George W. Bush-era tax cuts are allowed to expire around the same time that automatic spending cuts in the federal budget are enacted in the first half of 2013, the U.S. could slip back into a recession. The CBO estimates that the U.S. economy could shrink by 1.3 percent in early 2013.

That's a pretty alarming warning, but who's really concerned about a potential crisis? We've got a presidential election under way. 

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Fabricators on rebuilding manufacturing's infrastructure

April 18th, 2012
By: Vicki Bell

It all started with a blog post by The FABRICATOR®'s Senior Editor Tim Heston: The moral imperative of U.S. manufacturing. The post discussed the manufacturing supply chain and how the U.S. must rebuild its infrastructure to compete in the global marketplace. It led to posts by Editor-in-Chief Dan Davis and TPJ-The Tube & Pipe Journal®'s Editor Eric Lundin, who also had something to say about the topic, and it became the focus of the April "Fabricating Update" e-newsletter.

The newsletter quoted some of Heston's remarks, including: "I'd say it's a moral imperative that we again build our U.S. manufacturing infrastructure so we can respond to companies like Apple, with skilled workers and automaton. (As New York Times Reporter David Barboza reported on NPR), in the 1990s a California factory, full of automation, used to produce Apple computers. Surely, such flexible automation could be employed again. Apple has amazing market dominance and eye-popping production volumes. When you combine those two factors, some incredible manufacturing technology innovations may occur. (OK, the global market may not work like that, but the idealist in me sometimes wishes it did.)"

We asked "Fabricating Update" readers whether it is idealistic to think the U.S. can again build its manufacturing infrastructure to respond to companies like Apple. Here's what they had to say: (more...)

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The moral imperative of U.S. manufacturing

March 21st, 2012
By: Tim Heston

The mainstream press and pundits now seem to be realizing that globalization isn’t about finding cheap labor. No, it’s now about something that on the surface is a lot drier and more complex: the manufacturing supply chain.

New York Times reporter David Barboza--who earlier this year wrote the expose on iPhone production at Foxconn--put it this way on NPR’s This American Life: “Some say that you could build an iPhone in the U.S. for just $10 extra a phone, if you were paying American wages. But labor is such a small part of any electronic device, compared to the cost of buying chips, or making sure you have a plant that can turn out thousands of products a day, or making sure you can get strengthened glass cut just right within two days of the project being due.

“Labor is almost insignificant,” he continued. “What’s really important are supply chains and flexibility of factories. You want a plant that’s located right next to the screws, so that when you need a small change to that screw, you can go over there and say, give it to me in six hours, and they can say here you go. If that factory were in another state or continent, it would take two weeks. It’s the flexibility of the Chinese manufacturing system.”   Sure, U.S. manufacturers can offer some incredible flexibility--but generally not to the scale that China now offers.

The show’s host Ira Glass then stuttered a bit. This was a grueling episode for him. The entire hour essentially was a retraction for an earlier show about Mike Daisey, who has a one-man show that details his trip to Foxconn factories. When performing, Daisey opines about bad working conditions in China. But his show, it turns out, isn’t entirely factual, which some may feel is fine for performance art, but not for journalism. Well, at least good journalism.

After his idiosyncratic stutter, Glass said he felt guilty for owning and using an iPhone. Should he feel bad? Should all of us?

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Shortening the order-to-cash cycle

March 20th, 2012
By: Tim Heston

Today I talked with Ricky Loar, plant manager at Grove City, Ohio-based Horton Emergency Vehicles, a made-to-order ambulance manufacturer that has undergone a lean transformation during the past 18 months.  The shop used to resemble a kind of large custom garage--or, more precisely, a collection of garages that each had its own work practices.

Assemblers would order rough versions of various sheet metal components from the company’s internal fabrication department, which took a week to return that order. Technicians would start assembly, receive those components piecemeal, and manually cut holes and weld aluminum panels and other sheet metal and tubular components during the assembly process. From the initial order to final delivery, the entire order-to-cash cycle would be well more than 100 days.

Today, the company has it down to 68 days. And once an order is finalized and components are ready, plant workers can churn out about two trucks a week. When I talked with Loar today, he was getting ready for a dealer training session. The company has improved its manufacturing process; now it’s tackling front-office operations, including sales, order entry, engineering, purchasing, and customer service. The company literally has torn down walls between departments. When everyone collaborates, managers expect that order-to-cash cycle to shrink even more.

Some of Horton’s customers are private health systems, but some are government municipalities, which aren’t exactly thriving right now. But you wouldn’t know it at Horton. The made-to-order manufacturer is thriving in a market that’s struggling.

Just before talking to Loar, though, this Washington Post article appeared on my news feed. Apparently, U.S. manufacturing productivity gains may not be so impressive after all. In fact, those gains may have come thanks to global outsourcing. A part is made overseas then placed into an engineered assembly here; and that low-cost outsourced part has wound its way into the computations of government statisticians.

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Fabricate locally, deliver globally

March 13th, 2012
By: Tim Heston

When Jim Hawkins told attendees at The FABRICATOR’s Leadership Summit that global infrastructure demand was driving growth at his employer, Caterpillar, his statements weren’t unusual. As the director of Cat’s Machine Design Center in Mossville, Ill., explained, “The growing middle class will drive tremendous demand for energy, commodities, and infrastructure--and nowhere is this effect greater than in China.” He added that Caterpillar plans to expand its manufacturing presence to meet worldwide demand.

But at the end of his talk, Hawkins added one important coda: Yes, Caterpillar is a global manufacturing company, and yes, it may make sense to place certain plants close to customers in Asia and elsewhere in the world. But Caterpillar doesn’t make cars. Making a mining truck or large earthmoving machine is incredibly capital-intensive. Plant start-up and manufacturing machinery costs are immense, and volumes simply aren’t high enough for every Cat product to warrant building all plants close to customers. That’s why it still makes economic sense to open plants stateside and export globally--and this includes a future Cat plant to be built in Athens, Ga., an announcement that came a few days before the Feb. 29-March 2 conference.

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More about the future of U.S. manufacturing

August 31st, 2011
By: Vicki Bell

I devoted last week's blog post to one "Stamping News Brief" reader's comments regarding the current state and future of manufacturing in the U.S.  He expressed his concerns about governmental rules and regulations that are "strangling" his business and said things could turn around if the government became manufacturing's partner and abandoned the adversarial role. Labeling himself a "fierce competitor" who loves "winning in the manufacturing world," at this point, he just hopes he has a company and a job to go to in the future.

Fierce Competitor wasn't the only SNB reader who weighed in on this topic. Here are comments from others: (more...)

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Manufacturing could come roaring back, if

August 24th, 2011
By: Vicki Bell

The August issue of "Stamping News Brief" featured an article written by Michele Nash-Hoff, the author of the book Can American Manufacturing Be Saved? Why We Should and How We Can. In the article, which was published on huffingtonpost.com, Nash-Hoff noted that "after dominating the globe for over 60 years as the world's largest, most productive, and technologically advanced in the world, America's manufacturing sector is in a decline in nearly all industries. America's lead in a number of industries vanished years ago, and nearly all industries are facing potentially dangerous erosion." 

After presenting some of the article's content, including a rather grim look at the American machine tool industry, which fell from the world's third largest in 2000 to seventh in 2008, we asked SNB's readers if they think it is possible for policymakers to turn things around and what's the likelihood of their doing so in the next four to five years.

Among the responses was one from a reader who works for a company in the Northwest part of the country. Many in manufacturing can relate to his response: (more...)

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'A small bit of good news'

June 29th, 2011
By: Vicki Bell

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? (more...)

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