With foreign rivals making the cut, toolmakers dwindle

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | Friday, November 21, 2003 | TIMOTHY AEPPEL, The Wall Street Journal

[Willie Green]

ping

[RLK]

Some years ago there was a man by the name of Ross Perot who ran for president. More people should have listened to him.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Rockford, Illinois was once the machine tool capitol of the world.

[RLK]

And Milwaukee was once filled with small and medium sized high grade German and Polish machine shops that were the basis of the city. I don't know whether Cincinatti is still making the famous horizontal milling machines. It's all over.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I recall visiting with a Shell lubes rep in St. Paul in the mid 80s. When American Hoist (they made American cranes and draglines) closed, over one hundred machine shops and related suppliers also went down.
Wisconsin is fortunate to still have Bay Shipbuilding and the Manitowoc Companies. Their products were a lot better than American's and that's why they're still alive.

[Consort]

Perot got everything he wanted: He kept GHW Bush from getting reelected because he hated Bush like you hate his Bush's son. Also, he never wanted to be president, as he often said,....and he got what he wanted. It's not what he said as much as what he did; he helped to elect Bill Clinton. How did that advance what Perot was advocating?

[Willie Green]

I don't know whether Cincinatti is still making the famous horizontal milling machines.

Milacron threads:
Only memories linger at Mill
Milacron to Cut 800 More Jobs
Milacron Cuts 300 Jobs
.
Others:
Rebuilding an American icon (Bridgeport Mills)
Bridgeport Machines Lays Off 140
Machine Tool Co. Bankruptcy Sends Ripple Through JSF Program

[Willie Green]

Try contributing something substantive to the issue for a change
instead of just dredging up the same lame old emotional point-the-finger at somebody else crap.

[Consort]

Try contributing something...

Empty words from another wallowing Bush Hater.. Keep the sadistic doom and gloom coming Willy boy.

[chance33_98]

Good article. Now we have to figure out what to do. Do we leave such things up to politicians, or do we the people (like with the Reagan thing on CBS) start putting pressure on companies that ship jobs to cheaper, near slave labor, elsewhere.

I don't remember if it was Moses Maimonides or some other jewish scholar whose works I read a long time ago but one of them made the comment (and I am paraphrasing) 'Before you ask for God's help in a matter, ensure you yourself have done all you can, exhausted all attempts, and used the abilities He has given you. Then, when you ask him it will because you need him, not because you are being lazy.'

Like I said, a paraphrase but that is what I got out of the original. I think the same applies to situations like these. Before we go running to the governmental bodies (local, state, etc) we need to spend time and money in educating the public, putting pressure and boycotts on companies which farm out jobs to 'slave labor', and so on. I am not against competition, but when US companies go elsewhere for their needs, we need to let them know we will too.

The ball is in our court, we can pass it off to someone else and hope they will make the shot, or we can try it ourselves and hope that if we miss that at least the government can get the rebound.

Knowledge (who is farming out what, names, addresses, etc), organization, grass roots, can make a change. I am not against a company getting more profits, but the more work that is farmed out elsewhere the less tax dollars are kept here in the US, which does affect us all.

It goes back to Nash and game theory - 'Do what is best for yourself and others' and we can all win. When companies only do what is best for them it becomes an us v. them scenario. I am pro business, and I would like see business be pro-America as much as possible. I respect their right to make as much money as they want, but in return I expect them to respect that they are US companies and need to think of the people at home first. Sometimes foreign labor can be beneficial all the way around, other times it is sheer selfishness. Fine. I don't think we need to legislate it, I think we need to do business elsewhere than with those companies.

Question is not what the US will do about it, the question is - what will you/we do about it?

[Senormechanico]

Oh well, if the manufacturing companies of the USA go out of business, we'll just order all our laser guided missiles from China. I'm sure they'd provide them to us. We might even get them on sale at Walmart! (sarcasm)


SM

[Walkin Man]

When William Bachman, president of Bachman Machine Co. in St. Louis, was asked to submit a bid to make tools to stamp metal parts for car jacks, and to also produce the parts themselves, he priced the tools at $595,000. His Chinese competitor offered to make the tools free.

"It really doesn't matter how much I automate," Mr. Bachman says, "I can't compete with zero."

Yup, its hard to compete against communist slave labor.

The free traitors that hold our government in sway don't give a *hit about the future of the USA.

[Willie Green]

was asked to submit a bid to make tools to stamp metal parts for car jacks, and to also produce the parts themselves, he priced the tools at $595,000. His Chinese competitor offered to make the tools free.

The bidding process itself is skewed against ALL specialty toolmakers, foreign or domestic.
Tool and Die shops focus their facilities and expertise on the product they make: precision tooling. But rarely, if ever, do they make the capital investment in the production machinery on which this is used.

However, a supplier that has the production equipment (but not the toolmaking equipment or machinery) can easily supply the tooling for "free". They merely subcontract the tooling work and incorporate the cost into the piece-price of the parts they'll produce.

IMHO, purchasing agents who play this "game" oughta be shot. Yeah, it may be a way to access competitive tooling sources that they might not otherwise be aware of. But it also muddies the water between the true variable costs of direct material and the fixed cost of capital investment.

[Grut]

It's not what he said as much as what he did; he helped to elect Bill Clinton.

Let's be clear on this: if Bush I hadn't played the role of spoiler, Perot would have beaten Clinton. So it's Bush I's fault that Clinton got elected! ;^)

[ikka]

If it really is the case that American toolmakers are better, then watch a resurgence of toolmaking come back as the idiots at the head of the companies that go with the slave labor come back.

It used to be that all the tech support and computer programming jobs were going to go to India. Then Dell closed down part of their tech support and re-opened a place in the USA: reason: US tech support is better and customers were complaining.

[DeepDish]

"Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake says her company "explored different avenues that would allow us to gain needed cost efficiencies while continuing our relationship with Western Industrial Tool, but unfortunately we were unable to do so."

Translation: Bill Gates does not work for free but he expects his suppliers to do so. How do you think he got all those billions. By the way, I do not blame Bill one bit, but trade policy is going to be the death of American manufacturing. You know what you call a country that manufactures very little

---

Somalia.

[OregonRancher]

I've got over twenty years experience in having injection molds being built both here and in Taiwan. At first it was cheaper to go foreign, but after several years of sending molds back and forth, flying repeatedly to check qc and design changes, I found that even with a higher price tag here, it was cheaper and faster in the long run to do everything as close as possible....

[Tallguy]

Tool & Die Making has long been poorly understood by people who should know better. Customers for these tools often neglect the time & expense needed to 'condition' a new tool -- expecting the tool builder to 'eat' that cost. When you are constantly pushing both the technological & quality envelopes (simultaneously) it is very difficult to keep a lid on cost. The designer/builder of the tool cannot always forsee where the problems will be. Purchasing managers would often tell these small suppliers that they had better correct these problems at their own expense or they would be cut off from future bidding. This was a major problem even before foreign competition became a major factor.

[Poohbah]

Customers for these tools often neglect the time & expense needed to 'condition' a new tool -- expecting the tool builder to 'eat' that cost.

Let me explain the customer's perspective: when I contract for a piece of really expensive equipment, I expect it to be ready for use when it's delivered and installed. Telling me that I have to spend a lot of my resources to make that tool ready for use is a non-starter.