A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

The headline of this month’s column is typically ascribed to U.S. President John F. Kennedy back in the 1960s when my metalworking involvement consisted of playing on the jungle gym on the school playground. Actually, the quote was borrowed for him by his speechwriter from a local chamber of commerce, who had the same idea that I am presenting to you here.

Namely, that the metalworking industry as a whole benefits from the ongoing cooperation of the controls suppliers, the machine tool builder community, the educational institutions – whether high school shop classes, votech schools or university engineering departments – plus all you folks in the end user world, from the five-man job shop to the production department of a major OEM.

This is not pie-in-the-sky or Pollyannish behavior, it’s serious business. My company has formed an alliance with the Tooling & Manufacturing Association (TMA; Park Ridge, IL), for example.

Previously known as the Tool & Die Institute, this association changed its name awhile back precisely because it broadened its scope to include more manufacturers, larger companies and more affiliate members among the industry supply base.

This was done to expand the input, thinking and direction of the group, something from which we can all benefit. All of these members are still related to metalworking, but they now include stampers, weld shops, chipcutters of all sorts and even the machine tool builders and dealers who supply the industry.

They all find they have much more in common when running their businesses, and those perspectives are useful to all of the members.

We’re helping to sponsor machining competitions among the members and the students at local schools, with an eye on raising the bar (or water level in this analogy) to improve the skill sets of current workforces as well as the next generation of machine operators, programmers, machine tool designers and maintenance engineers.

Meanwhile, the technical feedback that we get from these various groups helps us design controls that are more flexible, more responsive to user needs, more adaptive to the rapidly changing landscape in machine shop operations today and, maybe most importantly, looking ahead to the future of manufacturing in America.

When I think of the speed with which the transition from manual machines to NC tape drives to CNC and now to robotic articulation, machine-to-machine communications, transfer line technology for blank-to-finished workpiece flow and even the elimination of the zone controllers on fully automated production/assembly lines has been achieved, it becomes obvious that controls suppliers must make a commitment to follow every development throughout the market.

This is not done to make us richer, as our involvement in most training enterprises is offered gratis. Rather, we do this to make us a better supplier, to make our customers build better machine tools and to make the industry more viable and more competitive on the world scene. In the end, everyone wins that way.

Several machine tool builder customers are now sending their students and customer workforces our way for specific training on the CNC technology. In one case, a builder has developed an entirely new machine for the job shop sector, based on the input they and we derived from our joint experiences.

In the field, too, better training means a better operator workforce, capable of running multiple and very different types of machines. The days when an operator of Brand X lathe wouldn’t even consider working on a Brand Y lathe are gone, forever and ever, amen!

And thank goodness they are gone, because American shops wouldn’t survive with that sort of mindset anymore.

Through the cooperation of controls suppliers, machine builders, educational institutions and you in the end user community, the boats will indeed all rise and prosper.

Incidentally, I want you all to know I got certified recently as a lift truck operator. We all need to multitask and keep honing our skills. Collectively, it will make us a better, stronger industry. In my case, I can now move some of the workpieces into our tech center work areas. Cool.

Actually had pretty good test scores, too. Kinda proud of that. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?