My used machine tool company, Graff-Pinkert, has sold some used Davenport multi-spindle screw machines to China over the years. It’s impossible to know what type of parts they will make. Haas Automation stopped selling machines to Russia after the invasion in February, but according to a PBS news show Haas parts are still reaching Putin’s people. Gene Haas’ Formula 1 racing team’s top sponsor was a major fertilizer producer based in Russia. The son of that company’s owner, Nikita, was the car’s driver. The Russians no longer put their name on the Haas car and Nikita is out as a driver,…
Author: Lloyd Graff
It’s August. The 2023 Chicago Cubs have a shot at the playoffs, and my granddaughters have become avid fans. Life is good. Baseball. “The greatest game in the world,” according to the significant prophet, Harry Caray. I’ve written about my love of the Cubs before, but really, can you write about it too much? My passion for the game probably began when I was three years old. I was a late talker. My first word was probably “Cubs,” but who can remember? My mom loved the Cubs. One of my happiest memories as a kid was going to Wrigley Field…
There’s no good writing, only good rewriting. I wrote a lovely blog about the possibility of a UPS strike. Then they settled! ___ I should have remembered my interview with James Hoffa, Jr., in 2006 about the “impending” UPS strike. Hoffa was head of the Teamsters Union. He told me “don’t worry about it.” There are 23 Locals, and you must satisfy them. Then you can make a national deal. And there was no strike. This time around, the key issue was how do you deal with part-time people who are increasingly part of the UPS workforce. In previous negotiations,…
I feel like I’m at Manny’s Deli for lunch, walking down the buffet aisle almost overwhelmed by the tasty options. I’m writing this blog hoping to pick the tastiest threads to weave together. The Supreme Court ruled that Affirmative Action was unconstitutional at Harvard and the University of North Carolina last week. At long last, in my opinion. If there was ever a broken system it was Harvard’s admission to the Freshman class, limited to 2,000 students. First, Harvard had 30 percent of spaces allocated to legacies. These were the children of former graduates, particularly famous and wealthy ones. Then…
I recently received a note from a friend telling me that Notre Dame had just terminated its intramural tackle football league. It was the last college in the country to have one. He had fond memories of putting on hand-me-down uniforms of famous varsity players. It was a way the kids in the halls bonded and developed a commitment to the university. To me, one of the saddest things about modern day life for the young and old, particularly men, is the lack of friendships. As a kid, I played baseball in the park across the street and in Little…
Please excuse the error in the email blast. If you meant to go to the newest podcast, please click on this link. The question seems as obvious as the sun in the sky. Our company can make more money if we can find skilled workers to run our machines. Where are they? What if that is the wrong question? What if there were a dozen questions and the simple, straightforward one was leading you into a brick wall? What if a better question was how much will it cost…
Are we more connected today or more distant? A few days ago, I received an email from a business relationship I had not heard from in a decade. He wanted to connect with me on LinkedIn. I do have a LinkedIn account, but I have no connections because I lost my password and lacked the motivation to invent a new one. Every week, I get several emails saying somebody I never heard of wants to tie up with me on LinkedIn. I ignore them all. I don’t feel like I have the time for it. But this email intrigued me…
Memorial Day 2023. Families gathered for barbecues. I was in California to watch my three granddaughters take the leads in a musical play about the making of the original Peter Pan in London, a story about a young boy who could fly. On the short drive to the improvised theater’s location, we passed a sign for the large Veterans Hospital in Palo Alto. My mind immediately focused on my high school classmate, Glenn, who I used to shoot hoops with. He had been just a little older than my oldest granddaughter when his life ended over the skies of Laos,…
About 30 years ago, my wife, Risa, was on the commuter train headed downtown for an appointment with her gynecologist. Suddenly the conductor was scurrying into the car. He shouted, “Anybody know CPR? A baby isn’t breathing.” Risa was trained in CPR and loves babies. She jumped to her feet and followed him to the screaming mother, who happened to be African American. Everyone else sat still as statues. The baby was covered in blood. She weighed 5 lb and was three weeks old. A young guy was holding her in one hand and doing chest compressions with two fingers.…
Picture this situation. $1.3 billion in clean, desirable, unused inventory sitting in your warehouses. Your predecessor recently got fired for bad business judgment after several successful years. Your brand is in the sewer and still sinking. There are plenty of buyers who would love the inventory because they could almost instantly sell it for a big profit, but if you sell it to them you might have a dozen lawsuits and get the ax too. The inventory we are discussing is Adidas’s leftover Kanye West brand Yeezy shoes. Tomorrow at Adidas’s annual stockholder meeting in Germany, one of the company’s…