I am watching an intriguing phenomenon in American education that has long-term implications for our economy and China’s political life. There is a large and increasing influx of high-paying Chinese students from China coming to the United States for high school and college. The University of Illinois has 600 students from mainland China in the Freshman class, 10% of the enrollment. Other colleges have taken a similar course. On average, the international students are paying twice as much as in-state students. There is also a significant flow of high school students attending private schools around the country. Some have sprouted…
Author: Lloyd Graff
Slight shameless self-promotion. I need to tell all of you about my new opus that debuted on YouTube this week. I made a documentary entitled “Saving Ferris” about the Chicagoland locations of my favorite movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” In the documentary I go to almost all of the filming sites of the movie, from the Sears (Willis) Tower, to Wrigley Field, to Cameron Frye’s famous garage that housed the Ferrari California Spider. In the documentary I talk about where and what each location is and how they have changed over the last 25 years, but I also strive to…
These last several months have been a struggle for me to find workers for the cleaning and painting department of our used machinery business, Graff-Pinkert. You might think, with so many millions of Americans unemployed or underemployed, it should be quite easy to find manual laborers who want to make $11 per hour with the chance to get on the company health insurance plan worth $5 per hour more, plus virtually guaranteed overtime pay and a year-end bonus. But it isn’t. I’d like to share my recent experience. First of all, few women apply for the cleaning and painting jobs. Seemingly,…
The sign’s message was clear enough: Please Do Not Touch. For some visitors, however, the temptation was too great. Here at the recent Maker Faire, a traveling festival for technology enthusiasts, people ran their fingers over the car’s ribbed exterior. The bolder ones took a more brazen approach, knocking their fists against the surfaces to see how the material would respond. One eager young boy, all of about three feet tall, went further, licking a front fender to learn how it tasted. A mortified parent quickly admonished him. This irresistible attraction was a 3-D printed vehicle made by Local Motors,…
Wednesday was the first night of the Jewish New Year holiday, Rosh Hashanah. I took the day off from work, went to the Synagogue and thought about my life. We celebrated by having friends and family over for a big meal. I am grateful to live in a place that has allowed Jews to flourish and prosper. America is such a crazy wonderful exception in a world of intolerance and outright hatred. Anybody who has lived long enough to know people who fled the Nazis or has seen photos of Auschwitz, or like me, had the privilege to visit a…
One of the definitive currents I see in the economy of the 2010s is the democratization of technology. Computers and devices cost a tiny fraction of what they did just a few years ago, and the learning curve to operate them has eased dramatically. For a few hundred bucks a person can buy an HD video camera, edit video on a consumer computer and then broadcast what they’ve shot to the world online for free. People can create Web sites with free open source software like WordPress that they can learn to operate in a few days. A person can…
Two months ago, Metal Seal Precision of Mentor, Ohio, had a fire. The incident is a warning to people who run screw machines that the workplace is a dangerous environment. Nobody was injured, but it caused a huge mess from the smoke, heat and water. John Habe IV runs the family owned company and he is one of the smartest, shrewdest guys in the turned parts business. He is doing a massive juggling act, getting his insurance money, reviving the Metal Seal shop in their nearby Arrow Manufacturing plant. He currently is deciding which machines to save and which to…
Having new shoes that you need to “break in” because they hurt your feet (or dealing with shoes that always feel uncomfortable no matter how long you wear them) will soon be a thing of the past thanks to 3D Printing. Several shoe companies, including Nike, Feetz, and United Nude, are now using 3D Printing technology to give customers shoes that are custom made for them — in the store, on the spot. I have been covering 3D Printing for over 20 years in my Technotrends Newsletter, and at first the technology was used for rapid prototyping. Over the past few years,…
I walked the floor of IMTS two days this week. I saw some impressive machine tools and robots, made some important business contacts, ate at Connie’s Pizza twice and saw a lot of sports cars in booths that seemed to be placed there for no reason. Was IMTS 2014 a productive show for me? Yes, but much of the flavor — the FUN that for decades defined IMTS — has been stripped away like steel scale passing through a Cincinnati centerless. This year’s IMTS booth budgeters must have not realized that it is not 2010. The time of austerity in…
The International Manufacturing Technology Show, IMTS, takes place this week in Chicago. It has a lot of meaning and symbolism for me. It brings the community of those who make manufacturing their life’s work together in one place every two years. A lot of the folks walking the floor and manning the exhibits are grizzled veterans of a dozen or more of these grueling events. They are filled with memories of past shows and the characters, some dead and many retired, who walked the aisles and shared drinks in the evenings. IMTS to me is a testament to grit, stamina…