I have been in tooling manufacturing for over 30 years. I have worked for very large, medium and small manufacturing companies. I owned my own company with two partners 1998-2001 before we sold out to a large multinational company. I worked for that company for 7 years doing a product start up for them before I moved here to NC to work for a small saw plate manufacturing company that I become a a co-owner of. We are lucky because we do short runs with fast delivery with many orders being less than 12pcs and a lot of 1 and 2pc orders that ship in 7-10 days.
The one single problem I see with manufacturing in America is the hypocrisy of the American people. Everyone wants to cry over the loss of American manufacturing jobs and at the same time run to Wal-Mart for the cheapest goods they can buy. I have seen people try to blame Wal-Mart for providing the one thing the people are demanding. You have no right to cry over the loss of American jobs when your consumption demands much to blame for the job loss. You can not demand cheap goods and demand high wages and good benefits and then cry about jobs going to a country with lower wages and even less benefits.
If you are in manufacturing today you need to find a niche market that allows you to make a product with quick delivery that the mass manufacturers in foreign companies cannot compete with. I do not weep over the deindustrialization of America because America got just what they asked for. I told my children some time ago that if they wanted to have a future in this service oriented industry environment then they needed to learn to how to say "Do you want fries with that in Spanish." Today my advice is to also be able to ask the same question in Chinese...
I have been in tooling manufacturing for over 30 years. I have worked for very large, medium and small manufacturing companies. I owned my own company with two partners 1998-2001 before we sold out to a large multinational company. I worked for that company for 7 years doing a product start up for them before I moved here to NC to work for a small saw plate manufacturing company that I become a a co-owner of. We are lucky because we do short runs with fast delivery with many orders being less than 12pcs and a lot of 1 and 2pc orders that ship in 7-10 days.
ReplyDeleteThe one single problem I see with manufacturing in America is the hypocrisy of the American people. Everyone wants to cry over the loss of American manufacturing jobs and at the same time run to Wal-Mart for the cheapest goods they can buy. I have seen people try to blame Wal-Mart for providing the one thing the people are demanding. You have no right to cry over the loss of American jobs when your consumption demands much to blame for the job loss. You can not demand cheap goods and demand high wages and good benefits and then cry about jobs going to a country with lower wages and even less benefits.
If you are in manufacturing today you need to find a niche market that allows you to make a product with quick delivery that the mass manufacturers in foreign companies cannot compete with. I do not weep over the deindustrialization of America because America got just what they asked for. I told my children some time ago that if they wanted to have a future in this service oriented industry environment then they needed to learn to how to say "Do you want fries with that in Spanish." Today my advice is to also be able to ask the same question in Chinese...
Sad.
ReplyDelete