In 1962, the French government created CTDEC, a research and training center primarily devoted to screw machining, in France’s Haute-Savoie region, located right across the border from Geneva, Switzerland. Comprised of 630 member companies, CTDEC has an annual budget of 6.3 million euros, and contains 6,600 square meters of laboratories and workshops. One of the most interesting resources at the CTDEC is its advanced diagnostic center used to identify part defects. It contains an extremely powerful microscope that can magnify objects tens of thousands of times. It has the strength to see inside an ant’s eye and can surpass that…
Author: Noah Graff
The first week of April, Noah Graff of TMW attended a press junket put on by the Arve-Industries Competitiveness Pole in the Haute-Savoie of France, a historic and current hotbed of machining close to Geneva Switzerland. The first day the journalists had a tour of the Musee de l’Horlogerie et du De`colletage, or, Museum of Clocks and Screw-Machining.
Jeff and Brad Ohlemacher, president and vice president of Elyria Manufacturing, talk about utilizing Verne Harnish’s Rockefeller habit of “the huddle” to unify their employees.
Today’s Machining World did an interview in the April issue with David Plitt, the foreman of the U of C machine shop. This video is an excerpt of the interview. He discusses several of the projects that the machine shop has assisted with, including a balloon designed to collect cosmic rays.
Machinery dealer Jim Graff just got back from a Delphi auction in Kettering Ohio. He reported that most machines there were selling very cheaply and that many were leaving the country. The two biggest buyers at the auction were from India and Peru, who primarily bought small production machines such as milling machines, Bridgeports, and Dennison Presses. Most of the Acme multi spindles and Acme repair parts were baught by dealers. Jim also observed that there was a strong presence of online bidders.
This day on March 18, 1662, the first bus service began in France. Blaise Pascal, most famous for his mathematics, physics and philosophical genius, conceived the idea. The system started with seven horse-drawn vehicles running along regular routes. Each coach could carry six or eight passengers. King Louis XIV granted a royal monopoly: Try to compete, and your horses and vehicles would be taken away. The fundamental problem of the bus service’s business model was that in the feudal society of seventeenth century France only the nobility and gentry were allowed to ride, which they did purely for amusement. The…
A recent story by Frank Langfitton on NPR’s “All Things Considered” reported that rising costs and shifts in Chinese government policy are actually forcing hundreds of smaller Chinese factories to close. According to the story, profit margins are disappearing as a result of the rising Chinese currency value, which has forced manufacturers to move their operations to lower cost countries such as Vietnam. The story reports that China’s government wants to encourage higher-tech manufacturing, so it is taking away the incentives it used to give to cheap goods manufacturers such as no taxes and cheap rent. China wants to follow…
American Axle has finally sat down at the bargaining table with the UAW since its members went on strike Feb. 26. Since the strike, 10 plants have been shut down and about 20 percent of GM’s workforce has been affected. What makes this strike different from other recent UAW strikes is that GM has so much inventory in its truck divisions that it is not under such urgency to get a deal hammered out quickly. Also, unlike other recent UAW strikes, the company trying to cut wages is not in bankruptcy. American Axle made 37 million dollars last year. It’s…
European based industrial auctioneer GoIndustry is on the cusp of buying DoveBid, the largest Internet industrial auction company in the United States. The industrial auction segment of eBay has suffered of late, as the company appears to have lost touch with that niche customer base. In this video, machine tool dealers Lloyd and Jim Graff of Graff Pinkert & Co. give their insider’s perspective on the worldwide consolidation taking place in the industrial equipment auction business. In this video Lloyd and Jim discuss the current state of eBay, addressing where the company has gone wrong in its…
Recently there have been four deaths and 350 significant allergic reactions from a contaminated supply of Heparin sold by the Baxter brand. Baxter outsources a key ingredient for Heparin in China which has been identified as the cause of the health disaster.