Automation, Productivity and Manufacturing Jobs

Retired packaging engineer and OMAC leader, Keith Campbell, has returned from his sailing vacation to post a couple of comments about packaging.

First, he predicts that good times are ahead for packaging machinery. Why, especially in this still stagnant economy? "Because the only way to increase earnings on weak sales is through gains in productivity."

Then he notes that the bar for entry level workers in manufacturing continues to be raised. He received a call asking if he knew where to find graduating students from a mechatronics education program to fill entry level operator positions.

Yes, Keith is right, there. The era of unskilled people earning middle-class incomes (if such a thing exists in today's America) in manufacturing is long over. If you're unskilled, you can find some jobs in manufacturing. But the pay will be just above minimum wage--and you'll probably be a temporary worker. Manufacturing jobs that pay a reasonable wage will require education, training and skills.

Social Media, Safety, Change, Jobs

The Siemens PLM social media team kept going long after the conclusion of their event. Here's one of the wrap-up blogs.

Have you noticed the changing sections at bookstores lately? Over the past 18 months or so, I've noticed that the once huge computer sections have shrunk dramatically. Also the business book sections. Lots of fiction. Lots of specialty books. The "philosophy" section is often devoted to Buddhism and Taoism. New Age is still pretty hot. So what happened to computing? No new programming languages to learn? Have we seen enough of the quick solution, light-weight business book?

Jim Cahill discusses the very timely issue of safety at Emerson Process Experts.

Speaking of safety, I've been interviewing for an article. A couple of conversations about risky behaviors. And on how a series of decisions that each one alone may appear to be only low to moderate risk add up over time to a major risk. (Think BP in the Gulf...) I think these exhibit patterns. I've seen it throughout my career. It's not so much the one decision, or even a series of decisions. It's the pattern and acceptable behavior of cutting small corners here and there. Unsafe workplaces, poor quality, poor manufacturing performance are among the results of such sloppy or duplicitous thinking.

Here's a presentation on inspiring kids pointed out by Garr Reynolds on the Presentation Zen blog.

The tyranny of the urgent. Heard that for the first time at the very first motivational management seminar I attended. Michael Hyatt discusses setting time aside specifically written in your calendar to actually work!

Robert Reich argues that "We Can't Rely on Foreign Consumers to Rescue American Jobs." The analysis is sound. You may not all agree on the prescriptions. But that's what makes politics interesting.

Leo Babauta discusses the elements of change in this Zen Habits post.


Decline of manufacturing jobs

I opened the local newspaper Saturday to read an unfortunate piece of news. A local company is shutting its original manufacturing site and shipping production to Mexico. The company, Holloway, manufacturer of sporting apparal, jackets and the like, first sought to reduce (already low) labor costs by starting four plants in the deep South in the 70s and 80s. All those have been closed and jobs shipped to Mexico. Now it has done the same thing in Shelby County, Ohio.

This is just another symptom of business managers who don't know or care how to make their products and trying to drive down one item on its cost of goods sold.

The local newspaper fumbled the ball by simply printing the press release. It didn't send a reporter off to corporate headquarters (a mighty one mile down Vandemark Road) to ask management why, what they've done to save the jobs, why they are pushing responsibility for the newly unemployed workers to "government assistance," and many more questions.

Some manufacturing leaders around the country are figuring out how to make money with manufacturing, saving good jobs. Others can't figure it out making what seems to be easy decisions to farm out manufacturing.  However, outsourcing manufacturing simply chasing cheap labor costs add to other costs. Inventory, supply chain management, quality and more suffer with decisions such as this.

Sidney and Shelby County have been built on manufacturing. The famous Monarch Lathes were made here. As were Copeland compressors (now Emerson Climate Technologies). I was shocked to learn recently that manufacturing employment at Emerson in Sidney is about 10-15 percent of what it was in the 80s. We're hit by the decline in automotive production--although Honda seems to be doing well. So, every job lost is a problem.

Check, for example, this blog post from a group of people who practice Lean Manufacturing about the opportunity a company took when Brunswick decided to move bowling ball manufacturing to Mexico. The subsequent quality decline opened the door for another company to step in. View the post and video here.

We just had a very contentious, hate-filled series of tax levy elections in Sidney to fund our schools. In Ohio, the state funds about 40 percent of total budget of local school districts. The remainder is to come from locally raised revenues principally from property tax, although there is an option for an income tax. The state has, over the years, passed laws that prohibit natural growth in revenues from property taxes and has also reduced taxes on business property. So Ohio's schools are in a perpetual fiscal bind.

During our long process of going through three defeats before passing the last election by one vote no one addressed the dire need of our society to educate more engineers and scientists. For want of one or two engineering-trained people working at Holloway who could manufacture efficiently and profitably, management just ships the jobs away.

Don't let this happen in your community. I'll raise my voice in mine to get us back on the manufacturing track.