“I can’t get good people to run the machines.” “I can’t get good men to go to my college.” The two statements are common laments today and related. Stephen Dubner’s brilliant podcast, Freakonomics, just updated its series from two years ago about dropping college enrollment and why men are not going to college, much less finishing. He interviewed, among many others, D’Wayne Edwards, founder and President of Pensole Lewis College in Detroit. **** D’Wayne Edwards’ story is fascinating and relevant to the manufacturing world. He grew up in Inglewood, California, home of the Forum where the Los Angeles Lakers played.…
Author: Lloyd Graff
Today my wife, Risa, got out of bed and experienced an awful moment of feeling the room was spinning. She is no tourist to migraines and vertigo, but this felt different. It passed in a couple of minutes, but the fear that it would return lingered. We sat on a bench in our bedroom, and I sang the John Denver song, “Some Days Are Diamonds,” one of my all-time favorites. We spent a quiet hour together. She drank electrolytes and felt confident enough to take a shower. Then she got on with her day. The song stuck in my mind…
I’m writing today at our 40-year-old round desk that can accommodate six people. We have moved Graff-Pinkert’s offices 700 feet east on 166th Street in Oak Forest, IL. Our machinery is in the process of being moved to another building 15 minutes away. Moving isn’t easy, even if you have known it was coming for at least two years. I sold our 21,000-square foot crane building five years ago that we have been in for 45 years. It was perfect for the needs of a used machine tool dealer who stocked machines, and it was 12 minutes from my home.…
I was planning to write about the difficulty for manufacturers to find space for their operations. I even had interviewed shop owners yesterday for insight. But that blog will have to wait because “Heil Hitler” hit me. At a Paris Olympics soccer match between Israel and Paraguay, young people chanted, “Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler.” In many ways, the games are a constant reminder of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Hitler’s introduction to the world, of himself, and the fascism which would soon overwhelm Europe and be welcomed into Paris. A few years ago, who would have expected to hear “Heil…
I stare at the artistic montage of Today’s Machining World covers that rests against the wall behind my son, Noah. Boxes filled with old issues of Screw Machine World and Today’s Machining World lay behind my chair. We moved Graff-Pinkert’s offices last week, 700 ft. down 166th Street in Oak Forest, Illinois, and those precious copies of my magazines will not be left behind. Soon I will take most of them home to stash in my basement, but the move got me thinking about 25+ years of writing about the precision machining industry in various forms and what got me…
Our used machinery business, Graff-Pinkert, is in the process of moving its headquarters down the street this week. Right now, I am sitting outside our warehouse with Noah, looking at my beloved 35-year-old apple tree, remembering the stories of the history of Graff-Pinkert. It all began with my grandfather Louis Graff who I never met. I just packed up his portrait photo, which we never got around to hanging on our office wall, into the back seat of my car. My dad, Leonard Graff, idolized his father and joined him in the scrap metal business after proudly graduating from the…
Such an election we are faced with. How did we get into this position? How can we prevent it in the future? I have been reluctant to write about this topic, but the situation the US faces demands discussion. We face some major issues that most likely will not be addressed such as: 1) A declining educational system with kids poorly prepared for the jobs that will be available over the next decades, including opportunities in manufacturing. 2) A need for a reduction in government spending, which neither Biden or Trump seems to care about. We are swamped with Federal…
In 1988, if you had the idea to start a CNC machine tool company in Los Angeles, people probably would have said you were nuts. I recently heard an interview with Steve Forbes, owner of Forbes Media LLC, in which he talked about what it takes to become a billionaire. He said if you have a great idea you don’t need to patent it, someone may steal the idea anyway. The person who makes the fortune is the one who takes an overlooked idea and runs with it like a fanatic. He gave the example of when Steve Jobs visited…
My wife, Risa, is an educational therapist who teaches kids with learning problems in our house. She probably has close to a thousand books in her library. One of her favorites is a short masterpiece by Laura Numeroff, If You Give a Dog a Donut. It has never been more apt than now as we see college campuses filled with tents with kids and agitators from off-campus proclaiming their anti-Semitism and carrying signs proclaiming Israel’s apartheid. The response by administrators and faculty has been almost universally appeasement. “If you give a dog a donut he’ll ask for apple juice to…
Can you predict how your mood will be tomorrow? How about your business next week? Life is constantly surprising us, yet we are forced to make judgments based on flawed data and bouncing emotions. I sold the building that my father built for our used machine tool firm in the mid-1980s. The decision was based on sluggish business and having had heart bypass surgery 10 years earlier. I took a five-year lease on half of the building figuring that if I was still alive in 2024, I would be in no mood to continue to fight used machinery battles. Now…