Dinosaur Trade

[kwhizz]

Hope and Change.....................................LOL

[marine1775]

Great Post guys. I have really enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts. I am a Journeyman Toolmaker in North Carolina. I also have 15 plus years and I started my apprenticeship on a Bridgeport and horizontal saw sawing and squaring up material for Journeyman Toolmakers. I feel the trade has evolved from just building dies and molds too doing everything from CNC programming to the Engineering Tech. side of designing and building custom automated production machines. I also teach machining technology at a local community college at night. It is only a certificate program. The college has a mindset that you guys talk about here. They don't understand what a toolmaker or machinist are capable of. Last year they tried to give me a student that was legally blind!!!

At the same token I went on a job interview a couple of weeks ago and was interviewed by a Mech. Engineer and a Value Stream Manager. They wanted a CNC Programmer, someone that could program PLC's, be a supervisor, design and build jigs and fixtures, and offer advice on improving the processes and also take on the maintenance division after a couple of months. All of for a whopping $45,000 a year. Oh I almost forgot the Value Stream Manager made a comment that really turned me off. He said that "he spends the majority of his time dealing with bad relationships between his employees".

I guess my point is that I don't think that allot of the white collars in our country that are in our industry don't know themselves what they need or even how to go about finding what they need.

U.S. Dept of Labor states that there were 84,300 tool and die makers in 2008. Compare that number to engineers!

My Dad was a Toolmaker, my older brother is a Toolmaker, so therefore I became a Toolmaker.

Hope everyone had a happy holiday season!!

Russ

[roninB4]

Thanks for posting Marine, your story is all too familiar to many of us. Companies are now looking for a bargain, a chance to cut several job positions by hiring just one person. That's all fine and well, we'd all like to cut expenses if we could. But the wages they offer for just ONE skill set are on par for 1979 and they expect to get the other skill sets for free. Some companies will even hire you in just to fix an existing problem or extract whatever knowledge you have before disposing of you and hiring the next unsuspecting candidate. On interviews I've been asked for solutions to problems before I was even hired. I never got anything extra for solving problems but I'll bet the supervisor who took my ideas did. At the company I currently work for there's been several newly minted engineers hired lately and they don't seem to expect them to work for 1979 wages. Guard your knowledge, they aren't going to compensate you for all your skills because we're just blue collar grunts. If we were smart we would have gone to college like those that interview us. I've seen job postings for die makers that require a college degree to apply. Wonder who made that stipulation in the ad? Things are rough here in southeastern Tennessee, hope things are better for you in N. Carolina.

[SPEEDRE]

Some of us have been disenfranchised for years. Lack of industry innovation and, future craftsman needs, i.e. apprenticeships, has hobbled the industrial idiots. Money has been the new intelligence in this land and knowledge, and experience has become outdated and redundant. I am a Journeyman Master Pattern Maker who hes been lost in this new world order since 1999, so I can speak from experience and knowledge. I feel that we as an industrial county have not really made, or engineered and produced, anything new and innovating on home ground for too long now. I have a foreboding it will not do anything like that again in our short lifetimes that we have left. My .02 cts. only. Thanks

[roninB4]

Originally Posted by SPEEDRE Some of us have been disenfranchised for years. Lack of industry innovation and, future craftsman needs, i.e. apprenticeships, has hobbled the industrial idiots. Money has been the new intelligence in this land and knowledge, and experience has become outdated and redundant. I am a Journeyman Master Pattern Maker who hes been lost in this new world order since 1999, so I can speak from experience and knowledge. I feel that we as an industrial county have not really made, or engineered and produced, anything new and innovating on home ground for too long now. I have a foreboding it will not do anything like that again in our short lifetimes that we have left. My .02 cts. only. Thanks

-I think that it's tougher to create something innovative that's not electronic, the mechanical wonders from when we started in the trades have been left behind. Sometimes that's been a good thing. Anything in the way of new technology has been taken to the third world for cheaper operating costs. In 1970 did anybody really believe that Korea would produce autos that would compete in the marketplace? I can recall when "Made In Japan" meant cheap crap, not the world class producers we know today. How did China gain a death grip on manufactured goods? The race to cash in on greater profits set them up with the hardware and knowledge to run it until they decided that they could do it for themselves. Sure, the third world would have caught on but I doubt it would have happened as fast as it did without the West handing it to them. That's partly what this thread has been about, guarding the only valuable commodity we have left (knowledge). We can't turn back the clock or undo what has been done but we can certainly choose who we help. We're down but not out Speedre, we have to prepare the next generation for the future because they have no one else but us. Hope things are well for you and yours. Next beverage is on me.

[aarggh]

From a non-U.S. centric view, it seems to me that the once massive manufacturing and IP pool of the U.S. lost probably more than any country when it came to out-sourcing products in the never ending quest for more and more short term gains and profits, and yet other countries are to this day following suit. And has there been a shift in the U.S. with regards to bringing back large scale manufacturing, not that I've seen? Companies appear to be unwilling to invest substantial amounts of money for what would be a long term project. So they transfer the IP to China or Tawian, to have their products made cheaply, all the profit, without the risk. Except of course the potential theft of IP, copy-cat products, and the absolute dependence created.

It's truly sad to see the style of management with 1 to 3 month profit tunnel vision, no investment for the future, no building a dynamic loyal and skilled workforce, instead, profits must be higher and higher, and returns are measured in weeks and months. So it's no wonder that this environment is unsustainable in the long term unless you back a sure winner. But not many take that risk.

In the meantime the Asian countries just quietly got the job done, with barely any labour costs, and the minimum of processes, building their skills and processes as they went along, offering very cheap services to the rest of the world.

One of my first jobs was in an engineering firm many years ago, but I strongly suspect they would find it difficult here nowadays to not only find people willing to do the horribly mundane work I was doing at the time, but to get them and do it at a price that allowed the mandatory 5000% profit. (sarcasm intended).

Lot's of money is nice, and no-one complains about a pay rise, but I think if there was a little more investment in creating loyal and skilled employees, and less emphasis on massively huge profits on small quantities, it could only create a better market. In my opinion nothing much these days is such a niche market that almost anyone else or any other company couldn't do it cheaper, better, faster, or all three.

I don't see this as anything specific to just this industry, as it seems this is the way all industries led by the current wave of bean counter management are going.

cheers,
Ian

[roninB4]

Originally Posted by aarggh It's truly sad to see the style of management with 1 to 3 month profit tunnel vision, no investment for the future, no building a dynamic loyal and skilled workforce, instead, profits must be higher and higher, and returns are measured in weeks and months. cheers, Ian

Although I've only quoted part of your post I fully agree with what you've written (typed). I wrote about my trade in my country because I cannot speak with any real knowledge about anywhere but here. Yes, this can apply to many industries and many countries, a pity they choose to follow the example of our failure. Europe and the USA chose to give away manufacturing to the Asians in the 80's and now lament that their economy is in dire straits, not hard to figure out why. I know of no country doing well that is a service based economy. I would hope that things will change but doubt that it will happen soon. I hope you folks in OZ are fairing better than we are. Thanks for posting Ian.

[aarggh]

Thanks. It is sad but I think most countries, apart from some of the cleverer and adaptable Asian ones, are already either heading down or are well down that path now. Just today on Slashdot this pertinent article appeared.

"U.S. companies are locating more of their R&D operations overseas, and Asian countries are rapidly increasing investments in their own science and technology economies, the National Science Board said in a report released this week. The number of overseas researchers employed by U.S. multinationals nearly doubled from 138,000 in 2004 to 267,000 in 2009, for example. On the education front, the U.S. accounts for just 4% of undergraduate engineering degrees awarded globally, compared to China (34%), Japan (5%), and India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand (17% collectively). 'The low U.S. share of global engineering degrees in recent years is striking; well above half of all such degrees are awarded in Asia,' NSB said in its report."

We’ve also lost major R&D sectors over here too, but if you don’t have R&D, what do you have?

Cheers,
Ian