Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Is the Tooling industry important any more?

I came across this article, which is a couple years old, I thought it made some good points. I think it will be the last of these I post for a while. I am going to concentrate future posts on fixing the problems of the industry. I think it's important to look back from time to time though. Only a fool would not learn from his own mistakes or to be aware of others in his shoes.

Tooling craft rapidly vanishes - 7/11/04

The article is about a tool and die company closing it's doors after 75 years of business. The quote I found most interesting was ....

"U.S. toolmakers were once so coveted they were exempt from the draft during War World II. Now they are losing out to foreign workers who often earn $2 an hour."

I actually have heard stories that not only were they exempt but many that volunteered for the services were rejected because of this or had to lie in order to serve. My, how times have changed.
This company, I'm sure, made many mistakes that led to it's demise. Some they were in control of and others I'm sure they had very little control over. They probably kept many of their workers employed longer than they should have, waiting for a industry rebound that never came. I have been guilty of this, as many have. You hate to lose your key people that you've spent many years cultivating to your competition over temporary work shortages.
It sounds like they didn't invest in modern technology when times were good, as many of us have. It didn't save the jobs at my company, but it did save my company from extinction. I now do almost as much work as I did with a shop full of employees. I can't say it's more profitable. I pay for machines rather than people. I'm glad I made many of these investments years ago, as one did one of the shops quoted in this article did.
The local economic development organization has requested a meeting with me as they do every year. Their main focus will be job retention. It's a little late for that with my company, unless the job they want to retain is mine. However, I will meet with them, as I always do. I will give them my laundry list of things they can to help create jobs, which I'm sure they will never act upon. I'm sure they ask for my support or donations, as they always do. I'm just too small now to be of interest to them and won't generate enough good press. At least they still take the time to meet with me.

4 comments:

Mary said...

Great thoughts! Thanks for the post.

Anonymous said...

Great post

I think Plastic industry is in upward trend, because it has great use in our day to day life

cheers

Anonymous said...

Nice posts

Hope to see more posts related to this particular story

cheers

roggyblog said...

good to see that after a period of going to china , a lot of tooling business is returning back to Europe and the USA. Also we profit from both sides: we make some tool components in china and assembly and inject it in usa /europe

roger van der Linden roger van der Linden