Re: kickass 5 part article on productivity


"F. George McDuffee" <gmcduffee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:2ec2o3pa8etd2ijcb5o1aa6c0b39a8rec5@xxxxxxxxxx
On Sun, 6 Jan 2008 00:34:23 -0500 (EST), Black Dragon
<bd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I don't envy you at all for having to do tight tolerance work on a mini
mill. I had to jump through similar flaming hoops to do close work on
those stinkin' Milltronics pieces of *** at my last job. And I didn't
have a viable choice either. No jig grinder there. No room for a jig
grinder either. Their wire EDMs are mid 80's vintage Agie's that are just
plain worn out. ***, rcm'ers have written about putting those ancient
old things in hobby shops, I think they'd be better boat anchors. Couldn't
wire two holes .25" center to center within better than a thou, and
location from pickup was much worse. Had to leave stock on the outside of
parts and grind in to the wiring. And their management wonders why stuff
takes so long.
=================
This is the classis "paralysis by analysis" trap where the MBA
management refuses to upgrade/replace equipment until it is fully
depreciated on the books, while failing to realize the product
mix has changed.

On the one hand, individuals such as your self are to be
commended for keeping the economic machine running with shims,
bailing wire and racer tape. On the other hand these
[successful] efforts can be seen as simply aiding and abetting
the looting of America.

To a degree, obsolescent equipment can continue to be used, but
as the equipment wears and the [new] product specifications
tighten, possibly with newer, more difficult to machine
materials, this can only be done by increasingly skilled
employees using more time consuming methods/procedures.
Additionally, with the very rapid evolution of
machines/processes, the repair and maintenance of the older
machines becomes increasingly problematic [and expensive].

The problem is that machine tools from the 1980s, even in like
new condition, are not competitive for the tighter tolerances
high production work of 2008, and will be even less so in 2015.

China, and increasing India, is "cleaning our clock" in many
cases, not because their labor rates are lower, but because they
have the latest/best equipment, including microcircuit production
as well as machine tools. The US has lost the production war for
the low-end commodity items and is in the process of rapidly
losing the production war for the high-end high value-added
manufacturing sector.

IMNSHO the root cause of this is the flagrant and egregious abuse
of the Internal Revenue Service Codes provisions covering
"depreciation," "investment tax credits," and "capitalization."
These were well intentioned to promote investment in productive
assets such as the latest machine tools, but have been subverted
to provide taxpayer subsidies for the purchase of SUVs by the
owners and for the M&A [merger and acquisition] games [also known
as buy, ruin, sell].

Under the current "free market" you are indeed entitled to "piss
off" your own money, but you are NOT empowered to "piss off" the
stockholder's money nor the taxpayer's money you fraudulently
obtain. In a perfect world, there would be intensive/extensive
RICO investigations and prosecutions underway, with significant
asset seizures. Don't wait up to see this on FOX news.


A big part of the problem is the type of people who find themselves on the
board of directors. Companies are more and more involved with finding ways
to reduce taxes and such and a bunch of financial genuises on the board of
directors will do that. I wonder how many businesses have had to shut down
because they failed to understand some incoherent rax rule and got hit by
the IRS? In many cases the businesses got it right but didn't have the money
to fight it out.







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