Thank you all for your interest!
We all watch the news headlines telling us of rising unemployment and the disappearance of the manufacturing industry in the United States.
One has to wonder which came first, the industry or the skills required to support it.
Successful entrepreneurs start�new businesses�using skills and knowledge they already have. If�the only skill we have is accounting, we will become a nation of accountants. On the other hand, if we were skilled carpenters, wouldn’t we see more furniture manufacturers? If there were more skilled toolmakers, wouldn’t we see more manufacturing of all kinds?
Just speculating here, but what if we all took a look at our hobbies, all the extra curricular activities we do and love. Ask ourselves, “Do any of these activities actually produce something tangible?” Strangely most hobbies that we truly love produce something (a garden, a shed in the yard, a bracket for your RC car, etc). Perhaps it is finally in our best interest as individuals and as a nation to earn our living doing what we like most!
Perhaps we should apply this thinking to what we tell our children as they plan their futures. College? Of course, but for what?
It may actually be in their best interest to achieve a skill that produces something that can be bought and sold, shipped and received. If there are not enough jobs for all the MBA’s we have now, then teach our children a trade they can use to start their own business and create their own job.
As a machine shop we have noticed a diminishing number of young people going into the fine, and once highly respected trade fields.
My father was an engineer working with toolmakers, and technicians from the 1950’s to the early 1990’s.
One story he told me sticks indelibly in my mind.
He was once giving a tour of a manufacturing plant containing assembly machines designed by his department several years earlier. He strolled knowledgably with a string of business suits following him and listening to his explanations of the wonders of the equipment his team designed. The whole time a wily veteran technician of 30+ years kept his eye on the group. This technician had the task of keeping the equipment running three shifts a day, which he did successfully for many years.
When the group came to the station where the technician was working he promptly pulled a handful of steel rollers from his pocket and walked to stand in front of my father, who, by the way, was VP of Engineering for this company, and interrupted his conversation. This veteran in his blue work shirt held out the rollers to my father and dumped them in his hand. He stated “This is from your machine. Once a week I pick up all the rollers off the floor and replace the bearing. It takes 2 hours. Thought you should know.” He then turned away and went back to work.
Though my father was stunned by his approach, he investigated the problem and found the technician had been reporting the problem to the department for a year but apparently no one thought a report from a mere technician was worth investigating. The project engineer was promptly sent to the plant to help the technician pick up the rollers until the problem was fixed.
Take from this story what you will, but it always reminds me to respect all aspects of the manufacturing profession.