By Lloyd Graff Today’s Machining World Archives January/February 2011 Volume 7 Issue 1 The key question facing American manufacturers, especially contract machining shops in the next two years is, how do you expand? Or, the interesting corollary question, is this the time to cash in? Let’s be real, American manufacturing has always been cyclical and still is. We are a little past a year into the current upturn. With low interest rates, the 2012 presidential election run-up beginning, the depletion of domestic players and the competitiveness of North American industry, these should be two excellent years. There is always a…
Author: Vincent
By Lloyd Graff Today’s Machining World Archives September 2010 Volume 06 Issue 07 Several years ago Graff Pinkert had a deal with a fellow who made a good living buying surplus machinery from government stockpiles and reselling it around the world. We talked about his bidding strategy and he told us his approach. He would assess his risk in bidding on a bulldozer or crane and put down a price he was comfortable with. Then he would put down successively higher figures. When he reached the number that made his stomach twinge, he circled it and let it settle in…
By Lloyd Graff Today’s Machining World Archives August 2010 Volume 06 Issue 06 Tony Maglica, the owner, founder and embodiment of Maglite®, burns with the same intensity at 80 as he did when I met him at 40.I saw the flashlight king recently at his million square foot plant in Ontario, Cal. I could tell from the moment he greeted me at the reception center and we walked up the 20 stairs to his large but surprisingly austere office, that the factory was Toni’s home. He immediately showed me a slide show on his Samsung 42” computer screen of his…
By Lloyd Graff Are we in a period of deflation in America? Will prices for goods and services, real estate and machinery trend downward for the foreseeable future? Will wages also move down? Will the value of cash be greater and illiquid assets like homes and machinery get harder and harder to sell? This is a question of enormous importance to not only economists and statisticians, but to everyone who doesn’t live in a cave. The bond market is alerting us to the possibility of deflation, with the 2-year U.S. Treasury paying a .5 percent return and the 10-year yielding…
By Lloyd Graff Chelsea Clinton married Marc Mezvinsky Saturday night. Why should I care? I care because Chelsea is American royalty. She just married a Jew, and not a plain clothes Jew or a hidden heritage Jew like John Kerry, but a practicing one. For better or worse, I grew up seeing everything through a Semitic lens. Bernie Madoff was a colossal thief, but worst of all, he was a Jewish thief. I cared that Scott Feldman won 17 games for the Texas Rangers last season because he was Jewish. I voted for Al Gore in 2004 because Jewish Joe…
By Lloyd Graff As the details gradually emerge from the BP oil spill it becomes more and more clear that management in London had incentivized the troops in the field to skimp on maintenance to enhance the company’s bottom line. There probably is a connection between the BP refinery explosion at Texas City back in 2005 and the Deepwater catastrophe in the Gulf. It appears to me that London had incentivized its employees to emphasize the short-term bottom line and ignore the future consequences. With the U.S. productivity statistics showing incredible improvement in efficiency month after month, it prompts the…
By Lloyd Graff What do you do when your doctor tells you to do something that you doubt is necessary? I just endured a kidney scan and a cystoscope because I had a few extra blood cells in a urine test. The nurse called me several weeks after the initial test at a six-month appointment and told me that I needed to come back because my test wasn’t “normal.” OK, I’ll spend an afternoon going into the city to pee in a cup. But then the urologist says, “Lloyd, I want you to do a kidney scan and a bladder…
By Robert Strauss Fernando Orellana’s father was a civil engineer and Fernando, when he was growing up, liked art. There seemed little to connect them. “But I saw my father tinkering when he came home, doing this and that. I watched, but with no particular interest,” said Orellana. “Then someone connected the dots for me. What my dad was doing was no less art than what I did. The idea is that he was being creative and trying to figure things out. That is art.” What finally dawned on Orellana is what has become an exciting mini-trend in modern art,…
By Lloyd Graff I received the email announcement entitled “AMT and NAM Announce Historic Partnership.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or yawn because of my gut cynicism about Washington based organizations. But then I thought about the financial regulation bill, which is the current obsession of D.C. politicians. Apparently the massive compromise bill is being written by a collaboration of Washington lobbyists and staffers. Most of the lobbyists are former staffers and many of the staffers are former lobbyists, so you need a scorecard to know the players. American manufacturing certainly needs an all-star team to advocate and trade…
By Lloyd Graff Tesla Motors went public this week. The company’s all electric roadster has not been a resounding success financially or mechanically, but has been a publicity magnet. Elon Musk, one of the company’s founders has an amazing track record as an entrepreneur. He has Toyota money behind him now and the modern Nummi factory in the Bay Area to make the new versions of Tesla cars. Tesla chose not to participate in the X Prize competition to produce a production-capable 100-mile-per-gallon car, but the company could still be a big big winner over the next 10 years. ***************…