Business
Manufacturing in Thailand – the “Detroit of the East”
Emily Aniakou, Today’s Machining World’s Managing Editor, was invited to join 11 other journalists from the U.S. and Canada (six in the automotive sector and six in the food industry sector) by [...]
Industry Scuttlebutt
I was in Northeast Indiana last week for a press junket promoting the manufacturing sector of the region. The first company we visited was the General Motors plant in Roanoke, [...]
A Day in the Life of a Job Shop Guy
“Mike” owns a small job shop in South Carolina. He started from scratch building a machining business from a turret lathe and a mill. He loves the business and asked [...]
NBA Flunks Negotiating
One of the more interesting parts of attempting to teach my son Noah the art of business concerns negotiating. It’s a topic of enduring interest because there is seldom a [...]
Why is my business so good if the economy is so bad?
I attended the Precision Machined Products Association’s annual meeting in Austin over the weekend. The question I heard often was, “Why is my business so good if the economy is [...]
African Lean: Pioneering Precision Machining in Ghana, Africa
In 2007-08 I spent a year in Benin, West Africa, as a volunteer with the U.S. Peace Corps. Although Africa is easy to write off as a hopeless mess, there’s [...]
Making the Call (Afterthought: May 2010)
For almost 10 years I’ve lived the schizoid life of a machinery dealer and writer/publisher. Both jobs stoke my intellectual furnace with firewood. I feel like I’m usually on top [...]
In Greece You Grease the Palm
By Lloyd Graff The financial world views Greece as the hole in the Euroland dike. Riots in Athens sent the U.S. stock market down 1500 points because people feared it [...]
Starbucks Betrayed My Wife
By Lloyd Graff Call it the frap flap but Starbucks is pulling the New Coke. Evidently the Buck is feeling the pain from McDonald’s competitive and cheaper McCafé, in tampering [...]
Do you really want to be the boss?
By Lloyd Graff Brian Capece has a five person shop in rural Maryland. He does wire EDM and precision machining for aerospace, satellite, medical and commercial clients, often working 65 [...]