Who would have thunk it a few years ago? The robot boom that many people thought would grow and grow and displace millions of workers has ebbed. Certainly robots have proved their worth with some jobs in manufacturing. The dull task of loading and unloading parts is perfect for robots, but now many of those jobs have already been replaced. Industrial jobs as a whole are down now with new machines having peaked in the period after the Covid pandemic. One place where robots are still hot is in food preparation and packing. Often done in a cold environment where…
Author: Lloyd Graff
What’s the stupidest idea you can think of? In a brainstorming meeting a couple of days ago, Rex and Noah and I were stuck thinking of the same old strategies that have been working just well enough for Graff-Pinkert. Then Noah challenged us to think of ten STUPID ideas for Graff-Pinkert. It turned out that the three of us came up with more than 30 goofy ideas for the business, several of which turned out not to be that stupid, spawning positive action the same day. It’s not inconceivable that one of them will turn out to be brilliant. In…
“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.…
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…