Machine Tool companies dying

My first visit to the site and I love it. I am a Journeyman Machine Repairman two years out of my apprenticeship working for Chrysler.
I am sad to see our machine tool builders dying. Standard, R&B, Briddgeport Machine no less! We have a number of Kasper CNC machines in our plant and a factory service man told me the other day that they are done also. Alot of this has apparently been caused by large auto companies stretching out the the time they pay (or do not pay) their receivables, foreign competition and other factors. But what it comes down to is there is soon going to be nothing american to purchase....sad...gary

The automotive pay game is a whole 'nother subject. Not a good one I might add.

Think Snow Eh!
Ox

Hi Gary;

It certainly appears that machine builders are fading away. It disturbs me as well.
But, look what happened to watch and clock makers when everything went electronic. The textile industry went overseas long ago. The worst thing is all the talent going to waste and nobody being trained either.

Farming is no gold mine either but the government subsidizes them. The American farmer cannot compete with crops grown in South America either so the government subsidizes them. I know some farmers and they have explained how it works. One plan is for low prices. The years when prices are low, the government pays them a few cents per bushel to help make up for the low price. If they have a crop failure they get help for that to. These farmers always thank me and buy me beer when they get their government checks.

Hate to think manufacturing will need to me subsidised. Where will that money come from??? I know, tax the CEO's that sent all the jobs overseas.

Hey!! Sit tight and be patient. I remember 25 years ago when we thought Japan was going to take us over economicaly and they didn't.
I laughed for weeks when the Japanese bought all that farm land around 1980 then prices plunged.

I don't think it is over for manufacturing in the U.S.A.. We will know for sure when this recession is over. Sooner or later the fat cats will need to toss the middle class a bone if they want to stay fat.
Jim

[This message has been edited by JimGlass (edited 06-01-2003).]

We had a factroy guy in from G&L at the beginning of the year. He said he wouldn't be surprised if they folded up at the end of the year. I can't remember which German firm bought them out. He said the first thing they did was to get rid of most of the machine shop and use vendors! Now they have a great deal of wasted time because the parts aren't right when they go to assemble them. They've been in the red for some time now. I was there in 93 and they had quite an impressive machine operation then.
Joe

The government is selling out the small farmer in favor of the large corporate farm. (makes farming easier to control) If you don't "farm" the government forget about making it. If you fall out of favor of the buracrats your done. Seen it happen too often. To humor yourself in what the poor farmer is getting of your tax dollar check this site out
Record of your Tax Dollars in farming

My employee couldn't understand how his poor buddy made it on $2 corn and $6 beans, $.50 cotton. He himself was working a couple hundred acres and was loosing his ass. (I suggested he should get into politics )

He was helping out this poor farmer buddy during harvest because he couldn't find good help. After seeing on the above site his poor buddy had received over $300K the year before, he lost his sorry feelings for him. He understands why he keeps a nice truck and equipment now. This poor farmer is in politics also. (Wonder why?)

In my area there are several farmers into 7 figure subsidies. (And most have good political connections)

Where is the farmer going to get their equipment when the manufacturing base is gone? Most farm equipment (tractors mostly now) are imports. It is spreading to other farm equipment fast.

Thanks for the link Timekiller.
I looked up my relatives in the database.
My aunt and cousins live milk check to milk check on their dairy farm in Iowa. They lost half the herd to bankruptcy and have about 20 cows now. They got a whopping $3,836.40 in subsidies from 1996-2001.
It's pretty sad how they live, but they won't let us help them. Too much pride. All they want to do is have a nice little dairy.

Another of my aunts received $3,295.79 in the same 5 year period. When I was last there 3 years ago, we talked about the fact that she was getting 50 cents a bushel less for her corn than the cost of production and storage. It's not the little guys getting the big subsidies.
Pretty sad and maddening situation.

Les

Let's talk about Machine Tool Making.

1. The industry is Capital Intensive. A machine tool maker has a huge amount invested in plant and equipment.

2. The industry is Labor Intensive. Almost all the workers are highly skilled and not only that, each worker has to have significant expereince working in the specific Maker's shop making that company's machines.

3. The Industry is cyclic. Some years there is a big backlog of orders. Some years, there is hardly anything for the skilled and valued workers to do.

4. The "Technical" competition is Brutal. As soon as a new machine design is fit for production, some competitor brings out a newer design with faster spindle speeds or faster motions or some other feature that he touts relentlessly in the trade publications. A Machine tool can be rendered obsolete by the time the first article is being crated up on a maker's loading dock.

5. The reverse of this can happen. A machine tool maker can devise a highly sophisticated design that just doesn't sell. Giddings and Lewis has had this happen to them several times and Davenport Machine had it happen with a servo controlled munti spindle automatic bar machine.

6. During slow times, a machine tool manufacturer can be in competition with slightly used machine of his own manufacture. This is happening right now.

None of the above points have anything to do with the government, and the best of the foriegn competition suffers all of the above situations.

For most of its history the machine tool industry has been stodgy and steady. Now, it has been dragged into the world of dizzying change and brutal competition.

I am amazed that any maker can stay in business at all.

timekiller,

Interesting site. As with anything, statistics can be made to look any way you want them too. That website is funded by an environmental group who is in favor of "conservation". The website makes it look like farmers af getting rich collecting subsidies on farm program crops. What they are not telling you is that the programs they support, the Conservation Resource Program (CRP), is a program that pays land owners to not farm their land. Thats right, all CRP program members have to do is seed their land to grass, and for the next ten years they get a check from the government for doing absolutely nothing.
The whole objective of the EWG (the owner of the site) is to divert money paid to farms in the form of subsidies to these conservations programs. When that happens the land goes back to grass for the birds, bees, or whatever. The farmer moves to town to collect his check. The family farm and rural America dissapear.
I grew up on a farm, and that farm did and still does rely on goverment subsidies. I wish it wasn't that way, but American farmers connot compete for overseas producers unless those countries do away with their subsidy programs as well. And I can tell you right now that that will never happen.
So there it is. There are three options.

1) Stop subsidies all together and watch every farmer in the country go under, not to mention loosing our supply of cheap food.

2) Stop crop susidies and fund CRP. Watch all the land turn to grass, and pay the owners to do nothing but kick back and watch it grow.

3) Continue the way it is until agricultural free trade is a reality, so that farms from all countries can compete fairly.

On last tid bit before I get of the soap box. Consider a loaf of bread. What does it cost? $1 maybe $2, pretty cheap right? Do you know how many loaves of bread can be made from a single bushell of wheat? About 65. Now, guess how much the farmer gets paid for that bushell. $3.50!!!!! Believe me, not too many people are getting rich growing the wheat. It's the middle men (railways, millers, distributors, grocers) that take the lion's share.

OK, that's it. My point it that if you don't want your tax dollars to go to farm conservation programs or subsidies, then support free trade.

[This message has been edited by ztarum (edited 06-14-2003).]

Mr.Ztarum. Farmers can work without subsidies. Some years ago the New Zealand government realised it was broke. They did away with all farm subsidies over 5 years. New Zealand agriculture has boomed. The rubbish who were in farming because of family tradition and/or the subsidies gave up and found new careers. The best farmers took over and are booming. New Zealand farmers live as well as any US farmer i.e. they do not live in huts and wear loin-cloths. You and I pay a tariff on New Zealand lamb - why - because the US farmers cannot compete. The Kiwi farmer raises, slaughters and packs the meat. He then ships it halfway around the world and it still sells for less than what an American claims it costs. No, the Americans are either incompetent or just looking for handouts. Oh, and try find the American lamb in the meat department next to the import - impossible.

You and I pay 3 times the world price for sugar - that's why Bob's Candies moved to Mexico and Lifesaver went to Canada - not over wages.

Look at all the rich people who buy farms and take government handouts to 'play farmer.'

The US lectured Malawi on the evils of farm subsidies. The Malawi government had given its peasants seed and fertiliser only. The little African chap told the US government drone to go play in the traffic.

I have yet to meet a 'poor farmer.' They drive expensive new vehicles and live a pretty palatial lifestyle

many machine builders are making much more automated robotic machines
.
might be making 10% fewer machines that cost 150% to 200% more. whats selling is machines that make more parts with fewer people.
.
you either make and sell what customer wants or you loose business. newer machines operator wheels a special cart full of blank parts into machine and closes door. opens other door and takes hundreds of finished parts out that are on the other cart. robot inside takes parts off cart loads machine, when its done robot unload part and puts on the finished part cart
.
i make a lot of machines for the auto makers. they usually want heavily automated machines. almost all want robots inside

What is this? Resurrect Jim Glass's 15 year old threads day?

May be an old thread but is nice to read one of JimK's posts again. Miss that guy.

L7

Very interesting to read a post from so long ago and know that you were mentioned in it. I was the factory service man that broke the sad news to Gary about Kasper. It wasn't long after that, Chrysler New Castle was bought by Metaldyne and most of the original Chrysler employees were let go.

Has anyone written a book about the recent history of the American machine tool industry, the decline of it all and the rise of Haas? The whole story about the big old companies getting either internally arrogant/conservative/sclerotic, being too dependent on the defense industry/car industry/government, being victims of destructive American financial markets or just failing to see where manufacturing was going would make an interesting tale. You could probably assemble it out of a collection of Forbes articles.

Edit, if you google "decline of the American machine tool industry", you get this RAND report: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Its Sustainable Recovery: Volume 1 | RAND but it's from 1994 which feels too early to be as interesting. There probably needs to be a "Fall and rise of the American machine tool industry"

If you want some history of some of our vaulted machine tool builders, check the one on Brown and Sharpe, Burgmaster, and Forces of Production by David Noble. I think the name of the book on Burgmaster is titled, The Day the Machine Stopped. Don't recall the one on B&S

Tom

So I just bought "The American Machine Tool Industry" (Machine Tool, Its History, Growth & Decline, A Personal Perspective by Albert B. Albrecht) Is that the Albrecht of Albrecht chucks? It was published in 2009 so I hope there are some good perspectives from the current era. Anyway, regarding the RAND report, it's quite interesting though it enumerates issues that people around here are probably familiar with, all leading to catastrophic collapse particularly over the 1980-1983 recession. The problem with the report is it specifically avoids mentioning companies or names or any other fantastic gossip that must have come out of a bunch of focus groups they ran. That takes most of the fun out of the story, though there's lots of good data.

TDegenhart said:

If you want some history of some of our vaulted machine tool builders, check the one on Brown and Sharpe, Burgmaster, and Forces of Production by David Noble. I think the name of the book on Burgmaster is titled, The Day the Machine Stopped. Don't recall the one on B&S

Tom

Click to expand...

Burgmaster

The newer title is 'From Industry to Alchemy: Burgmaster, a Machine Tool Company' written by Max Holland, who is the son of a former Burgmaster employee. It sure is a good read. Starts with the founding in the 1940's up through the takeover by Houdaille, and the demise. I read it a few years ago, and could not put it down once I started. It's currently on Amazon if anyone is interested.

rcoope said:

So I just bought "The American Machine Tool Industry" (Machine Tool, Its History, Growth & Decline, A Personal Perspective by Albert B. Albrecht) Is that the Albrecht of Albrecht chucks? It was published in 2009 so I hope there are some good perspectives from the current era. Anyway, regarding the RAND report, it's quite interesting though it enumerates issues that people around here are probably familiar with, all leading to catastrophic collapse particularly over the 1980-1983 recession. The problem with the report is it specifically avoids mentioning companies or names or any other fantastic gossip that must have come out of a bunch of focus groups they ran. That takes most of the fun out of the story, though there's lots of good data.

Click to expand...

When you're done reading 'The American Machine Tool Industry', could you give a short review telling if it's a good read? If worthwhile, I would buy it. Thanks.

jeffm8622 said:

When you're done reading 'The American Machine Tool Industry', could you give a short review telling if it's a good read? If worthwhile, I would buy it. Thanks.

Click to expand...

Will do for sure. As a used book they are bizarrely expensive. I splurged since I got some Christmas $$ from elderly relatives. Most non illustrated history books I get are under $10 on Abebooks.com. I just got Forces of Production described above for $8 plus shipping and will look for the Burgmaster book

rcoope said:

Will do for sure. As a used book they are bizarrely expensive. I splurged since I got some Christmas $$ from elderly relatives. Most non illustrated history books I get are under $10 on Abebooks.com. I just got Forces of Production described above for $8 plus shipping and will look for the Burgmaster book

Click to expand...

I just read a review on 'Forces of Production' and noticed the first printing was from 1986 and another one from 2011. I wonder if they added any updates....please confirm when you are done with your reading. From the review, it sounds like a really good book and I may just buy it right now.