SWARF Online

SWARF Online provides insightful commentary and inside information on the machining world similar to what you will find in the print edition of Today's Machining World   but more current. You will also find additional Swarf content which you can comment on at the TMW blog, www.swarfblog.com.

Michael Jackson vs. Billy Mays

By Lloyd Graff

Michael Jackson’s passing got most of the ink, but the death of TV pitchman, Billy Mays, just a few days later affected me so much more. Both men died at 50. Billy was funny without trying to be funny and could relate to consumers. Michael Jackson was a sad freak who couldn’t relate to himself or his fame. Mays had soul, Michael had hair.

Watch the following videos for more insight and a response from the Today's Machining World team.

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Motivating Employees

Daniel Amos, the head of Aflac, the remarkably successful medical insurance firm, was interviewed in the New York Times on Sunday. His remarks on leadership and motivation are intriguing. He treats employees like voters and challenges his sales staff not with overt quotas but by telling his people he wants them to make a particular figure. For instance when he used to be a sales manager he would say to an employee, “I want you to make $60,000.” He recounts that employees couldn’t say, “No, I really don’t want to make that much.” He says they didn’t know how to argue with him when he said, “I want you to make more money.”

 

 

Link to full article: New York Times

Question: Do you think it's advisable to treat employees as though they were voters?

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Automatic Machining's Last Issue

By Lloyd Graff

My daughter Sarah does funerals virtually every week as a Rabbi in Palo Alto, California. She has a knack for capturing the essence of the person who just died. She talks to the family, selects stories, brings in her own remembrances and embroiders the eulogy with texture and empathy. I thought about her eulogies before I started to write this piece about the death of Automatic Machining Magazine because I hope to strike a truthful and empathetic tone. Automatic Machining started almost 70 years ago under the name Screw Machine Engineering in Rochester, N.Y. Don Wood, its founder, had a background in the screw machine industry and saw an opening for a publication that catered to the people who produced precision components.

The magazine found its niche in the heyday of National Acme, New Britain, Brown & Sharpe and Davenport. Used machinery dealers, like Graff Pinkert and Co. coveted space in the back of the publication. It became the primary advertising venue for the business. Everybody read the back of the book and the Automatic Machining staff bent over backwards to accommodate a tribe of dealers and tooling guys who knew nothing about print advertising.

Don Wood was a machining guy who filled his pages with the stuff of the industry. People liked it because it was authentic and didn’t try to be more than it could be.

Simplicity and Don Wood's personal and heartfelt columns gave Automatic Machining its voice. Its niche was small, but Wood and his advertisers defined it clearly enough to fend off larger competitors in the machining realm. Wood was a smart business person in his prime, staying under the radar of magazines like American Machinist and Modern Machine Shop while developing a following in the screw machine crowd with his folksy and sometimes whimsical approach. The competition finally found him around the year 2000 but Don continued to keep a following into his 80s. Don’s son, Wayne, worked in the business, but refrained from developing his own visible presence in Automatic Machining. The industry changed rapidly to one dominated by European and Japanese builders focusing on CNC equipment. Automatic Machining was a CAM operated magazine; a Davenport in a CNC world. When the bottom fell out of the market in recent months the magazine’s resources were depleted.

As a longtime advertiser and recent competitor, I mourn the loss of the Don Wood Automatic Machining era. I feel a sense of loss for his rugged and durable creation.

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