By Lloyd Graff WESTEC as we know it is changing. There will be no show in 2011 in Los Angeles. SME (Society of Manufacturing Engineers), which organized the 2010 event, is planning an Aerospace Defense oriented manufacturing show for next April in Anaheim, Cal. In September, 2011 they will host a Las Vegas event which will be a cross between a trade show and a collection of open houses. SME has found it increasingly difficult to put on a major L.A. show during an IMTS year. It isn’t that the West Coast people are necessarily going to IMTS, but the…
Author: apalmes
By Lloyd Graff The last time I talked about Brad and Jeff Ohlemacher of EMC Precision Machining they were crowing about convincing President Obama to put on safety glasses before he toured their Elymira, Ohio, plant. Today they are back in the limelight after closing a deal to buy fellow fourth generation machining company—Biddle Manufacturing of Sheridan, Indiana. The Ohlemacher and Biddle (Myers) families knew each other from the Precision Machined Products Association (PMPA), but their fortunes diverged in recent years. Biddle gravitated toward high production work, buying Hydromats and developing an in-house capability in plating, heat-treating, and electrochemical deburring.…
By Lloyd Graff Jack Daly spoke to the Precision Machined Products Association Management Update in March and was inspirational as always. He is a sales guru who speaks all over the world on the fast topic of selling. Daly made a comment that stuck with me long after the performance. “Fire fast, hire slowly,” he told his audience. My career is pockmarked with doing just the opposite to my great regret. His gist was that you generally know if an employee is going to be good after you observe their performance for a week or a month. They may not be real productive quickly, but they…
By Lloyd Graff First of all, I consider myself an Independent fiscally conservative Republican. I voted for Reagan, Dole and George Bush (both of them). But I am disgusted with the negativity of the Republicans on health care reform. The decision to demonize the Democrats for political gain saddens me. As I read the key features of the final law, it is a lot more centrist than the “sky is falling” GOP partisans have labeled it. There is no public option, it gives help to small businesses and aids less affluent uncovered people. It eliminates the insurance blackball for a…
By Lloyd Graff Probably the hottest market in the world for machined parts right now is Brazil. By one account I’ve heard Brazil is using more cold finished bars in the tonnage than the United States. They are even importing some such material from the States. The big headache in dealing with the land of the Bossa Nova is bureaucracy and paperwork. It still takes a visa to enter the country. But Brazil is swinging. Romi’s offer for Hardinge Corporation is a wakeup call to other people in the hemisphere that the Brazilians are serious people. They have an aircraft…
By Noah Graff Hurray! The monumental health care bill has been passed—virtually. It’s been watered down from its original version dramatically, and one could actually make the argument that it’s pretty similar to the bill Republicans proposed. The bill contains hundreds of pages of details that I can’t be very articulate about at this point, but there’s one part of the bill that I can comment on because it significantly effects my life. I have a preexisting medical condition I was diagnosed with when I was 18. It’s very controlled by medicine and has little effect on my daily life…
By Noah Graff I hate PCs with a passion and generally love Apple products, my iPhone in particular. It gave me great pleasure to see a recent story in the Wall Street Journal that said 10 percent of workers at Microsoft use the iPhone. The article was inspired after a tactless Microsoft employee used his iPhone to take a photo of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for at an all-company meeting at a Seattle sports stadium. According to people present at the event, Ballmer snatched the iPhone out of the employee’s hands, placed it on the ground and pretended to stomp…
By Lloyd Graff Business is improving for shops, but it has not filtered down to the machine tool companies. UCC filings, which track the pulse of machinery sales, indicate that the sales during the first quarter are quite sluggish. On the used machinery side it is a “catfish” market. The bottom feeders are finding a lot to munch on. ************** The spare parts business for high production turning—screw machine and Hydromat—is trending up and accelerating. The size of individual orders is expanding as well as the number of orders. ************** We understand Tony Maglica of Mag Instrument Inc. (MAGLITE) is…
By Lloyd Graff I entered my cave over the weekend. Just me and my 60” TV. I watched 100 hours of college basketball if you include channel surfing and DVRing. I have emerged with a vision of the NCAA basketball tournament etched in my cerebellum. My thoughts. People are obsessed with the brackets and the matchups. Forget about it. Worthy teams will get to the Final Four with the remote chance that an interloper like a James Madison (Baylor this year) will sneak in so they can be crushed in the semis. The top seeds; Kansas, Kentucky, Duke, and Syracuse are strong, though I would have replaced…
Today’s Machining World Archive: March 2010, Vol. 6, Issue 02 I recently talked to General John Batiste who I interviewed three years ago in Today’s Machining World. Batiste served 30 years in the U.S. Army before walking away from the carnage in Iraq before the surge turned things around. He went to work at Klein Steel in upstate New York, helping to run the large steel service center business. Today he says he‘s happily hustling steel and sees business improving. General Batiste had been stationed at Fort Hood in Texas during his military career. I asked him about the psychiatrist,…