This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
Chris Kaiser President/C.O.O. BIG Kaiser Precision Tooling Inc. Hoffman Estates, IL www.bigkaiser.com


ViewPoints Putting Global Change into Perspective I


magine looking out over your shop floor and seeing a young boy steering his tricycle through your machines. How many OSHA laws would that be breaking? How many safety regulations?


Five decades ago, that boy was me. And I have witnesses. One of the original operators at Heinz Kaiser AG, the tooling company my father started in Rümlang, Switzerland in 1948, is still on staff, and he remem- bers my tricycle laps.


So I suppose I have a unique cradle-to-now (don’t say grave), Europe- to-US perspective on the metalworking industry. I’ve been in the US since 1981, so I have been fortunate to see changes from several perspectives. In the mid 1970s, when my father introduced NC machining at Heinz Kaiser AG, the first two NC milling machines arrived in the heart of preci- sion engineering territory by way of Cincinnati. The US was a NC machine tool power house. But over the decades that followed, the US relinquished its status as world “innovator” in machine tools, and as we all know, some of the renowned machine tool companies were sold to companies overseas or eventually went into bankruptcy. With them went know-how and innova- tion. We simply didn’t buy into technology as much here in the States as they did in Europe. Maybe we didn’t feel the same pressure to innovate to stay afloat. And until the past decade, Europeans largely looked to Japan and Germany for advanced machine tools.


And to me, to this day, the US of A is the land of opportunity like no other country in the world.


Of course, there were exceptions. Great companies like Haas, Hardinge, Hurco, and more recently, MAG, kept the torches burning, but the sheer volume of machines were being built elsewhere.


So at least until the last decade, the US lagged behind Europe in shop


technology. You’d be hard pressed to find an operator at a drill press in Eu- rope at this point; they’re still common here. And as Europe, pushed by the invisible hand of comparatively expensive small floor space and increasing labor costs, followed the latest technology to maintain competitiveness, the US became enamored of the offshoring trend. And I believe it was a


112 ManufacturingEngineeringMedia.com | April 2013


trend—it was, to a degree, more “fashion and greed” than necessity. I’m sure there were some short-term savings, but when brands like Weber are building some of their grills in China, you have to feel American manufac- turing had temporarily misplaced its soul. Meanwhile, Europe’s limited space continued to get more limited. Multitask and five-axis machining solved the problem of two machines’ jobs on one machine, so they’ve been adapting as quickly as they could. But their cost of labor for the last decade has lapped that of the US. And now, a poor exchange rate is forcing jobs out of Switzerland and Western Europe, first into Eastern Europe, and now into China and the Pacific Rim, as well. What we did in the US out of fashion, they’re doing out of necessity or they will follow the path the US took over 10 years ago. This presents the US with a massive opportunity. And to me, to this day, the US of A is the land of opportunity like no other country in the world.


The exchange rate is particularly interesting because the lower dollar is bringing jobs back to the US. And we have advantages that Europe doesn’t have—unlimited space, lower labor costs, and a newly found abundance of energy and natural resources. And now that offshoring is going out of style, reshoring is again pushing the US to expand its technological reper- toire and make the necessary investments that Europe had been making until it became unsustainable.


But the one thing we don’t have is a big enough qualified labor force. I think about the apprentice program they have at Kaiser in Switzerland. They have one full-time supervisor guiding 11 apprentices, who go to school a couple days per week, work a few days, and in four years have a certification with the option to further their schooling or look for employ- ment. The best ones, we try to hire back; it’s like having an internal farm system. Many US manufacturing companies, like Caterpillar, GE and oth- ers, used to have such programs in place 30 years ago. Even high schools and community colleges abandoned their programs. If they had remained, there wouldn’t be a skills gap today.


But for these types of programs to work, we have to address the public perception of manufacturing. The US has the opportunity and built-in advantages to reassert itself as the world’s technological innovator. Our success or failure in attracting and grooming talent is the lynchpin. ME


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150