Today I get to celebrate the end of IMTS and the start of the Jewish New Year – Rosh Hashanah. For me these are surprisingly connected events to be treasured and assessed. My life is a combination of the mundane and the spiritual, but I find it strange and sometimes inspiring how the stuff of business and the practice of my religion wrap around each other so often in my daily life. This hit me at IMTS when I met with a fellow traveler in the machine tool world at the Mazak exhibit. He had sought me out after reading…
Author: Lloyd Graff
The NFL for 2012 began on Sunday and Monday. IMTS took the stage a short walk from the stadium where the Chicago Bears played the Colts. Both are big powerful institutions controlled by a small group of owners and run by a loyal staff of administrators on the East Coast. And both organizations face major challenges today. The NFL has two major problems that are closely related. It’s current and past players are extremely worried about the physical toll of the game – particularly concussions. The corollary issue is that parents are increasingly forbidding their kids from playing tackle football…
The election is two months away. Polling data, which has been remarkably accurate during the primaries, is showing a close popular vote, but the electoral map favors President Obama. A Republican must win Florida and Ohio, most likely, to win the presidency because California and New York are solidly Democratic. If Pennsylvania goes Democratic, which is likely according the polls, and Illinois is probably not in play, Florida and Ohio become absolutely crucial for the Republicans to put enough electoral votes on the board to win. I thought Mitt Romney made an excellent speech to the Republican Convention, but it…
Today is the 4th anniversary of my heart attack. I wish I could forget it. I wish I could just cleanse my memory of that unbelievably scary day. But Labor Day weekend 2008 will never go away for me – as the time I almost died. The Republican Convention of 2008 was about to take place, with John McCain making his fateful call to Sarah Palin, which probably cost him the 2008 election. The Cubs were playing the Houston Astros, which I remember because the doctors had it on when I reached the operating room for bypass surgery. It’s…
The feedback on the Caterpillar piece I wrote a couple days ago was highly provocative. It appears that Cat may have overplayed its hand by playing hardball in Joliet, Illinois, at their hydraulics components plant. By locking in new workers at $12 per hour Caterpillar has made the calculation, I believe, that it is willing to let skills erode, and make up for the decline in talent with sophisticated machinery like robots and automated inspection machines. This is not so different from what you see in hospitals where very expensive equipment is simplified so technicians making $15 per hour can…
I wrote about the strike at the Caterpillar plant in Joliet, Illinois, three months ago. Cat was absorbing a strike of union workers who were being asked to accept a six-year wage freeze and a cut in health care benefits to keep their jobs at the hydraulic components plant one hour southwest of Chicago. This past week the workers took a slightly modified deal, against the wishes of the officers of the Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Cat raised a proposed $1000 ratification “bonus” to $3100 to tip the vote to their side and is converting a $7.8 million…
Wayne Dyer, the motivational speaker, once told the story of going to a spa to deliver a speech. The day before his appearance he decided to try the baths, which were the spa’s big attraction. There were a dozen small pools with water of varying temperatures. Cold was on one end of the pools, hot on the other, with the pools gradually ascending in temperature. He noticed that all the people in the pools were sitting in the two in the center. Dyer wanted to experience the gamut of water temperatures. He tried the 140 degree one and then plunged…
The dilemma of the lonely machine tool dealer is the common denominator of most businesses and occupations. The clients want to buy something tailored to their needs. The seller wants to sell them what they have, at a premium price. The tug of war today is over the cost of the tailoring. In an esoteric field like high production screw machines the value differential between the generic and the special is large because the hardware is expensive. But the expertise needed to choose and operate the unusual hardware is even scarcer, thus also very expensive. In the last five to…
Are you worried about robots? I wasn’t until I saw the video of a robot built in Pisa, Italy, that could show emotion by change in mechanical facial muscles. The face looked so real it was scary. When they perfect the synching of the voice and face we will be close to the day of the robot girlfriend. Could this be the solution to the shortage of women in China? (see below for a video) ****** My niece Joann Minerbi lives in Los Angeles and has been a graphic designer for almost 20 years. Her field has been commoditized and…
I’ve read a lot about the terrible tragedy of the boys abused by Jerry Sandusky at Penn State and the cover-up that went up to Joe Paterno and Graham Spanier, the University’s President, but today it all has a personal twist that I’d like to relate. Six weeks ago I celebrated the 50th high school reunion of my class at University High in Chicago. I got quite involved in the Internet communication in the run-up to the event, and I made it a point to meet one on one with guys I played basketball with on the team. The fellow…