[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[gonzo]

Willie, except for the names and places, my story's identical!

I may have to go to 'White-Room' production of medical supplies. The paperwork's a bitch, but so was ISO-9002.

Those parts that I used to make are now being made by non-English-speaking peoples, without regard to ISO-9002. It's cheaper in the long run to have the recalls............FRegards