I attended my first Technical Conference held by the Precision Machined Products Association (PMPA), this past weekend in Indianapolis. Some observations. I think there are a lot of good things going on in American machining firms now. Talent is arriving, just in time to replace the tiring Baby Boomers whose feet are aching from 40 years of tending gear gnashing machines. Young people are coming in via community colleges, or out of sheer boredom of frying lettuce at Subway for $9 an hour, 26 hours a week. The message that you can earn a decent wage, earn respect, and find…
Author: Lloyd Graff
We’ve seen April Fools Day. My turn. What’s happening? For machining people, the first quarter was solid if not spectacular. The harsh winter hampered production, and inventories piled up in the last quarter of 2013. Automotive was a little soft in January and February, but generally machining folks were satisfied. Not so for companies selling capital equipment. After a strong finish to 2013, machinery and capital goods firms were looking forward to a strong start in 2014. They did not get it from the scuttlebutt I hear. Nobody knows why for sure. You can blame the rush to use the…
At the beginning of our observance of the Jewish Sabbath last Friday night, we said the customary opening prayers over the Shabbat candles, wine and bread. I then had the impulse to add one more prayer called the “Shehecheyanu,” which is a special thanks for surviving to that day. It is also tradition to say it when doing something for the first time that year. My wife asked me why I had taken this moment to say it. I said, “Risa, it’s opening day of the baseball season on Sunday. I get to celebrate it again.” And she knew I…
Two friends sent me David Brooks’ column, “Going Home Again,” which appeared in last Thursday’s New York Times. Rarely does one person recommend a column out of the blue, so when two astute people send me one I take notice. Brooks wrote about hearing the British writer-musician, Sting, speak at the TED conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. Sting spoke about how years ago he lost his creative juices. He just could not come up with fresh exciting music. At first it was a short flatness, then weeks and months of drought. It stretched into many years of producing nothing vibrant,…
I admit I was surprised at the tempo and fervor of the comments on my last blog (“Working For Nothing”). I thought I was writing a little piece about the challenge to wages by technology. But what you, the readers, took off on was the generational divide, which apparently lurks below the economic and political issues of the day like an active volcano. Younger folks see a structure rigged to protect the entrenched interests of fading older people who want all the goodies for themselves as they work longer than they should, and then draw on fat pensions. Older folks…
LIVERMORE, Calif. — Fusion, the process that powers the sun, is the forever dream of energy scientists — safe, nonpolluting and almost boundless. Even here at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where the primary focus of fusion work involves nuclear weapons, many scientists talk poetically about how it could end the world’s addiction to fossil fuels. “It’s the dream of the future, solving energy,” said Stephen E. Bodner, a retired physicist who worked on fusion at Livermore in the 1960s and ’70s, recalling that the military focus was basically a cover story, a way to keep government money flowing to the lab for…
I read a provocative article by Jeremy Rifkin in last Sunday’s New York Times, “The Rise of Anti-Capitalism.” His thesis is that much of work as we know it is being devalued by the use of machines and robots. Things and services are also trending toward zero in price. The old view of the scarcity of commodities and labor is being turned on its head by the unlimited availability of stuff at almost no cost. He cites robotics and 3D printing using discarded plastic as feedstock as evidence of the trend towards endless deflation of prices. Rifken understands better than…
At its worst, the “airpocalypse” that settled over Beijing and northern China in late February had a fine particulate matter reading 16 times the recommended upper limit, turning Beijing into a veritable smoking lounge. Satellite images, a click away on the Internet, showed a massive toxic haze. Farther south, cadmium-tainted rice has been a staple of Guangzhou’s food supply since at least 2009. The dead pigs that floated down Shanghai’s Huangpu River last year were grotesque enough to haunt citizens even in their sleep. With such scenes as a backdrop, Premier Li Keqiang suitably declared a “war on pollution” at the…
Automotive is back. America has become a great car-making mecca again. Almost every major builder has a manufacturing presence here. The market for cars is solid, if not exuberant. The industry has headed to the South in Tennessee, the Carolinas and Texas, and even further south into Mexico, which has integrated itself into North American manufacturing like Canada did 25 years ago. The UAW is no longer such a dominant player in the car building scene. The recent rejection of the Union by Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga is representative of its marginalization by younger workers who see the UAW as…
I spent a lot of my weekend doing just what I really wanted to do. Watching BASKETBALL. I watched the college game, the pros, even a little womens ball. Loved every minute. I’m a junkie, I’m a basketball nut. I actually think basketball may have saved my life. As a kid I played almost every sport. Started with baseball. We played on the sidewalk, in the street, on the golf course between the 6th and 13th hole of the Jackson Park course across 67th street, next to my house. In my teens I played golf on that course for $3…