IMTS is coming in a couple of weeks, so it is a good time to assess where the industry is right now. It is apparent in retrospect that $100 oil was a bubble. It enabled a fracking boom in the United States and an oil sands boom in Alberta. Both have crashed and deflated, giving the machine tool industry a mega migraine. Oil has rebounded from a low of $33 a barrel to almost $50 now. But the competition for market share between Saudi Arabia and Iran, two of the few producers who have extra capacity and can afford to…
Author: Lloyd Graff
It’s back to school week in my neighborhood, which means later meals and parents waiting in our living room. My wife Risa will be practicing her profession in our home. She is an Educational Therapist, helping kids develop optimal learning skills and self-sufficiency in their educational careers. Risa has been developing her own skills in this profession for over 40 years, though she looks no older than 40 to me. Because she teaches outside of the school systems she has the freedom to develop her own unique teaching techniques and style. She likes to play educational board games with her…
Lloyd is on vacation this week. Below is one of his favorite summer blogs he wanted to share with you again. It was originally published in August 2015. Summer jobs for younger people used to be common and highly desirable. Twenty years ago almost two thirds of high school kids found paid summer work. Today the statistics say only one out of three hold summer jobs. Many factors have contributed to this fading away of summer employment. Unions are blamed for vetoing non-union hires in some plants and offices. Minimum wage increases make summer hires less attractive because employers have to pay…
I just listened to a fantastic story on the National Public Radio podcast, Invisibilia. The episode began with a story about a group of friends sitting outside in the backyard having dinner and drinking wine on a beautiful night. All of a sudden a man broke into the yard, pointed a gun at them and demanded money. Unfortunately, none of the people at the dinner party had any money on them so they all began pleading with the man to spare their lives. After a while one of the women asked the burglar if he wanted a glass of wine.…
Damon Carson likes to tell stories about the goods he sells. He takes the discards of industry and government and reframes them as wonderfully useful products for those clever enough to realize their true value to them. Damon calls his firm, “Repurposed Materials,” differentiating himself from scrap dealers and recyclers. He defines his company’s mission as taking products which still have value “as is” and finding that unrelated buyer who will buy them to use for a different purpose. He has a deftly written email newsletter that he sends to 150,000 of his nearest and dearest. He claims a 20%…
I am all into the concept of self-driving cars. That does not mean I am ready to be a pioneer and buy one of the early iterations like the Tesla Model S with Autopilot, but I am a totally engaged fan of Elon Musk as he gambles on the sexiest new technology in his cars. The inevitable happened on May 7. Joshua Brown, one of those risk-taking kind of guys who always wants the newest and hottest technology, put his Model S on Autopilot at 74 miles per hour next to a semi with a white trailer on a cloudless…
Dave Dolan runs one of the biggest screw machine operations in North America, KKSP Precision Products of Glendale Heights, IL. The company started in the 1960s with a couple of Davenports and a founder possessing great skill and ambition. I sold him some of his first machines. He sold out long ago when the name was still K&K Screw, but the company is true to its roots, even with 460 machines in the U.S. and Mexico. It is still pounding out parts on Davenports and Acmes, about $55 million worth a year now, cutting 28 million pounds of brass and…
The issue that seems to be giving America heartburn in 2016 and driving the election rhetoric is the gulf between the well-off and the falling-off. Underlying that is the feeling that it is getting harder and harder to move from “barely getting by” to “feeling successful.” I listened to a remarkable podcast this week by Malcolm Gladwell called “Carlos Doesn’t Remember.” It was so good I listened to it twice. Gladwell recounts the struggle of “Carlos” (not his real name), an exceptionally gifted student from a broken home who is trying to reach his potential. He was spotted in 4th…
The path was steep and winding, inaccessible by car. It led to the beach on the Pacific Ocean at Monterey Bay, near where my granddaughter went to summer camp. She wanted to show off the scenery to us. I chose to stay at the car while the others in our group trudged down the rapidly descending path to the sea. I wanted to douse my memories of 8 years ago, when I was wondering if I’d make it up the sand dune at Lake Michigan where the family was vacationing right before the heart attack that almost ended my life.…
Two weeks ago I spent several days in Poland, staying in Kraków and Warsaw. Poland is a country full of beauty with a rich history. Unfortunately much of that history has been a bloody one due to its location between Germany and Russia. I knew that while there it was imperative for me to learn about the history of the Jews in Poland—my roots. Many of my ancestors lived in Poland; fortunately a lot of them left before World War II. While staying in Kraków I drove an hour away to visit Auschwitz, the most notorious of Nazi concentration camps.…