“Depending entirely on the US market is a losing strategy for any manufacturing business ” Mitch Free, CEO, MFG.com

“Depending entirely on the US market is a losing strategy for any manufacturing business…”  according to Mitch Free, CEO of MFG.com.

The photo here is from an INC Magazine article entitled: How To Get Ahead In China.

The quote is from a press release in Malaysia where MFG.com is kicking off their “Asia Supplier Discovery Tour.”

Here is the full quote so that you can see this version of ‘economic patriotism’ in its full context:

“As the economic recovery in the US has been slower than expected, depending entirely on the US market is a losing strategy for any manufacturing business and in the long run bad for employment in America as well. We see that lots of US-based manufacturers are now looking for alternative sourcing destinations in Asia to reduce their costs as well as develop key partnerships,” said Mitch Free, the CEO and founder of MFG.com.

With support like that for USA manufacturing, who needs enemies?

Is MFG.com really representing you when their CEO tells the world that  “US-based manufacturers are now looking for alternative sourcing destinations in Asia to reduce their costs as well as develop key partnerships,”?

According to PR Newswire report on Yahoo News site :  “MFG.com, the largest online marketplace for the manufacturing industry, recently joined hands with multiple overseas manufacturing corporations to kick off the Asia Supplier Discovery Tour in Kuala Lumpur and Penang for generating new business for manufacturing suppliers across Malaysia.” (emphasis ours)

Why would you pay these guys money to help YOU find business for your U.S. based manufacturing company when they are really spending their time in ASIA kicking off the “Asia Supplier Discovery Tour?”

American manufacturers need economic patriots, not ‘Global outsourcing facilitators’ that claim to promote U.S. manufacturing here in the states while they are really spending their time developing and promoting low wage, race to the bottom competitors across Asia.

“Asia Supplier Discovery Tour?”

“Depending entirely on the US market is a losing strategy for any manufacturing business?”

That doesn’t sound like economic patriotism to me.

Unless you are  a Malaysian manufacturer

The  single point in time, monthly headline unemployment rate is a not very useful leading indicator for people in the precision machining business. If anything it confuses people by its jumps and the fact that it indicates both people who found jobs AND people who quit looking in despair.

The following three charts give you a more useful idea about what the unemployment situation in the United States really look like.

14.7% U-6 Total unemployment / underemployment

As we have discussed before, the U-6 rate is the more honest and encompassing indicator of the unemployment situation. It counts the total unemployed plus all marginally attached  workers. (Marginally attached is Economist-speak for “part time employed because I can’t find full-time work that suits me.”

Civilian labor force participation rate- in decline for 12 years

If anyone has anything good to say about what this CIVPART chart indicates, I’d love to hear it. And so would a bunch of recent college graduates  currently unable to pay off their student loans.

While the population grows, the opportunities to work have not. More and more people are increasingly dependent on fewer and fewer people who are employed.

Note: BLS reports that the long term unemployment rate was little changed in September at 4.8 million, accounting for 40.1% of the unemployed.

The one oasis of employment that I know of is in the precision machining industry. Our shops are looking for talented people to operate our computer numerically controlled machine tools. If you can perform high school math and are comfortable with computers, you should consider a career in precision manufacturing.

Check it out here.

BLS LONGTERM

U6RATE

CIVPART

EMRATIO  58.7%, seasonally adjusted.

The Invisible Hand Is NOT Training Enough Skilled Machinists.

(And by the way, neither are we.)

Estimates of as many as 600,000 unfilled skilled manufacturing jobs despite  years of unemployment over 8% just don’t compute. As a free market guy, I continue to be frustrated waiting for Adam Smith’s Invisble Hand to bring the trained workers our industry needs.

Have we done enough to pursue our own interest, so that society too can benefit?

Why isn’t the Invisible Hand working?

  • Has it been handcuffed by school bureaucrats who insist that college is for everyone? 
  • And parents who fail to critically think about the ROI and Debt obligations that a college degree means today?
  • Has the invisible hand been amputated by school board  and advisory council members who think that the trades is just a necessary evil for someone else’s troublemaker of a kid?
  • Do we have a need for public private partnerships like Right Skills Now to elevate the need for skilled tradesmen and to show advanced manufacturing as a viable, well paying career? Why is the US only in the 17th in Science or 25th in Math achievement worldwide?
  • Or have we as shop owners and machinists been missing  in guiding that invisible hand by concentrating on everything else except skilled workforce development?

What are you doing to develop the skilled workforce that you need?

Or are you waiting, like most shop owners over the last decade or so have waited, for someone else to train your crew?

Invisible Hand Graphic courtesy Micro Loan  Bank Kiva

A Few Good Workers originally published in Modern Applications News May 1999.

USA Today has an extensive article and video segment on Right Skills Now, the skilled workforce development program spearheaded by Darlene Miller of Permac Industries, in Burnsville, Minnesota.

Darlene is an elected vice president of PMPA and a member of the President’s Council on Jobs and Effectiveness (PCJC).

Thanks Paul Davidson at USA today for a great story about how to get started in a career in machining / advanced manufacturing.

We can’t wait two years or four years,” for students to graduate college, says Darlene Miller, CEO of Permac Industries, a contract manufacturer in Burnsville, Minn., who promoted the idea for the program last year when she was unable to find seven CNC operators. “We need people now.” 

Experts say the program could serve as a national model for employers needing skilled workers yesterday and many jobless Americans unable to spend two years earning an associate degrees.

A pipeline of skilled factory workers is sorely needed, especially with Baby Boomers retiring. A year ago, 600,000 skilled manufacturing jobs were unfilled, and 80% of manufacturers couldn’t find proficient workers, according to a survey by the institute and Deloitte.

“Our programs, especially Rights Skills Now, are generated by industry needs.” Deborah Kerrigan, Dunwoody College of Technology. “There is a huge need for skilled labor.”

Read the full story and watch a great video at USA Today Right Skills Now

Right Skills Now

One in every ten people have dyslexia.

Aside from having it rough trying to read traditional print material like books and newspapers, dyslexics also often have a hard time processing web pages because most of the content are usually text-based.

(One symptom of Dyslexia is the rotation of  the images being looked at.)

See this!

Open Dyslexic offers their open source Open Dyslexic Font for free download here.

And they have their Dyslexia friendly web browser, OpenWeb available in the IOS app store for iPad, iPhone, and Ipod touch.

Not this!

Hope this helps, say, one in ten of you…

Wear of equipment in our industry is not on most people’s minds nor check books.

It didn’t look like this when we installed it…

There is no ROI on any of your shops’ equipment if your ablity to process chips is stopped because  your chip processing system is non-functional due to a foreseeable and preventable wear failure.

Here are 6  wear abatement strategies for the world of high abrasion, high impact, 60-G  force chip wringing and fluid recovery:

  • Make sure high wear surfaces are easily replaceable; liner, screen, top cover, discharge housing;
  • Make sure that abrasion resistant materials are properly specified for those parts subject to sliding friction;
  • Protect specific areas such as impact zones, liner, and vanes and key structural welds with hard facing;
  • Use Grade 1 screen material to maximize life of separation area;
  • Manganese steel is a choice for areas encountering both sliding and impact wear;
  • Nickel hardened castings can be used for critical transitions and joints in air discharge style equipment.

Just as we use specialized coatings to maximize output on our tools, selecting specialized materials for critical components in balance of plant equipment like chip processing equipment can assure durability and routine operation instead of creating another maintenance headache to add to the list.

For most of us, wear abatement strategies are limited to getting the right coatings on our tools and using the proper cutting oil. Yet we are vulnerable to wear failures in our balance of plant anciliaries such as chip wringers and processors.

In my steel cold finishing mill, I had shot blasters for removing scale from hot rolled bars. These shot blasters used 4140 Q&T hardened steel shot that literally ate the machines up from the inside out due to abrasive wear.

I remember increasing uptime and service life  in my blasters by strategically placing hardfacing and upgraded components, just as the Prab strategies discuss.

I hope you never lose a shift of production because of lack of attention to high wear applications somewhere critical in your shop…

Where else in our shops is abrasive and sliding wear a vulnerability?

Nanosteel (photocredit)

Wear Abatement Article – Production Machining

Prab Inc.

The Precision Machined Products Association (PMPA) has partnered with The Manufacturing Institute to expand Right Skills Now, a fast-track machining training program aligned to the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)-Endorsed Manufacturing Skills Certification System.

Working together to help talented people connect with careers in advanced manufacturing.

Right Skills Now and the Skills Certification System are successful programs that are building the educated and skilled workforce manufacturers need to successfully compete in the global economy.

We have seen estimates of up to 600,000 open jobs available in advanced manufacturing. Positions in precision machining, tool making, welding, and quality control are jobs where you can make a rewarding career as well as a living.

PMPA and The Manufacturing Institute are combining forces to help make information available about these careers, programs where you can get started to qualify for these careers, and to promote the use of credentials and the Skills Certification System to assure employers of the ability to perform defined skills and operations. Expanding Right Skills Now will help make the training and credentials more widely available.

Read the full release.

For more information to help you decide if a career in precision manufacturing is for you, go to PMPA Career Page.

Just because everyone else is unemployed doesn’t mean that you have to make the same decision that they did. Get the facts about a career in advanced manufacturing.

Here are  8 reasons why you might want to consider stress relieving the steel before machining your parts.

  1. High carbon grade of steel. Alloy grades over 0.40 carbon and carbon grades above 0.50 carbon can often benefit from stress relief.
  2. Heavy draft to make size. Heavy draft can add cold working strain which can set up stresses in the part.
  3. Small diameter parts. The percentage of cold work (strain) is higher for the same draft reduction as diameter decreases.
  4. Long parts. Stresses tend to display  and their effects increase longitudinally.
  5. Assymetric parts– and parts with large differences in section or mass.
  6. To increase mechanical properties. At lower stress relieving temperatures, the hardness, tensile strength, and elastic properties of most cold drawn steels increase.
  7. To decrease mechanical properties. At higher stress relieving temperatures, hardness, tensile strength and yield strength are reduced while % elongation and 5 reduction of area are increased.
  8. To reduce distortion off the machine. Usually stress relieving is used as a last ditch effort to reduce the distortion  that presents after machining a part with some or many  of the characteristics given above.
There are certain applications where stress relief (of steel) is indicated

Stress relieving is a lower than  the material’s critical point thermal treatment also known as strain drawing, strain tempering, strain annealling, strain relieving, or pre-aging. It is performed to modify the the magnitude and distribution of of residual forces within a cold drawn steel bar, as well as to modify the mechanical properties.

Thanks Seth at Sixthman Blog for the photo.