U.S. Factory Shipped To China

[Seascamp]

Mr. Gimpy,

May I present a different and non-political view of industrial management. At a time I was tapped to manage a manufacturing operating division that had net sales of just over $100 million a staff of 232 and was in deep trouble. Gross margin profit was -276%, 43% of all product was scrap; work injuries were the norm not the exception and worker moral was non-existent. Two years later the staffing level was at 120, gross margin was at +87% product quality was at a three sigma level and the wages nearly doubled and not a single soul had been laid off. And the best part is that work injuries ceased to exist. We became ISO 9000 certified plus increased our product hazardous area certifications to include five new endorsements from independent testing labs. We attained seven new patents of which two I co-authored. This was during the Clinton admin era and I can say categorically that that did not hurt or help and was invisible. Where the rubber meets the road is in knowing what all the Fed, State, and County rules and regs are on all matters from soup to nuts and that defines the playing field and ya carry on from there.

When the mountain started to move I had all the capital equipment funding I could ask for and my lobbying for what I called the 10-20 rule was adopted and approved by the board of directors. In essence my proposal was that we work toward paying 10 people $20 an hour rather than 20 people $10 an hour and that we achieve this by equipment and process improvement and all the training we can get our hands on and taking advantage of natural attrition. Along the journey we got 27 GEDs taken care of, 12 AA degrees, 3 BAs 1 Masters degree on the board, all paid for by the company. So does that make me some kind of management guru, hero or brain? Hell no, it just means I had a wonderful team to be on that let me be a member, that?s all. I knew I had won the battle when the young Gals started calling me Mr. TOB as in ?tough old bird? but they won the war, every last one of them and good for them. Anyway Mr. Gimpy all I?m doing with this is to make the point that business survival is way, way below political philosophy and who or who may or may not be sitting in the big chair. That is unless some politico does something really radical or stupid. And no, no one could pay me enough to go through that again but I?m glad the division won and are still out there in the global market place kicking butt and taking names, I?m damn proud of them. Alas, my life?s work is out in the oil patch where things are happening so being cooped up was very difficult for me.

Respectfully submmited,

Scamp

[colmurph]

Seems to me that the rank and file of the various unions have made it almost impossible to turn a decent profit for the investors in a firm. If they cannot get some kind of consessions from the union then they ought to close down and open up where labor is cheaper. The ILWU on the west coast is a good example. The shipping terminals, to reduce cargo theft, now refuse to let the longshoremen park their cars on the piers and instead make them park in a parking lot outside the terminal. Because of this the union fought for and got VALET PARKING! These guys already have a guaranteed yearly income whether the work or not, and they get paid $56.00 an hour. The terminal operators are hoping that the union will pull an illegal strike so they can break the contract and bring in Teamsters to replace the ILWU. They've already replaced the ILA in Camden with Teamsters and will be getting rid of the ILA in Philly soon. The ILA in Wilmington saw the light and scaled back some of their outrageous demands. Pretty soon it won't matter though......you'll see National Guard Troops mobilized to load and unload ships when the ILA goes out on strike over the TWIX ID cards. The TWIX will probably get rid of 25% of the ILA on outstanding warrants alone.

[BLUEHAWK]

We did this to ourselves.

ABOLISH:

- Closed primary elections
- The electoral college
- Gerrymandering

[colmurph]

We need the Electoral College. It's the only way we can keep New York City, Boston and San Francisco form controlling the rest of the country. Do you realize that the population of Queens is larger than the population of the state of Montana? Without the Electoral Collage, majority rules, and the sad fact is that the majority in the cities are all under educated and under employed which is what most of the rank and file of the Democratic Party is made up of.

What do you mean by "Closed Primary Elections"? Would you like to see Republicans voting to pick the Democratic Candidate and vice versa? You may as well do away with voting all together and pick the next President by lottery. How about we do like we did with the first President, and just "Draft" him. While were at it, why don't we scale back salaries of representatives? Most politicians (Both Parties) are in it for the "Money" both what they get from the taxpayers and what they can get under the table from special interest groups. In the last 80 years or so, there hasn't been one politician who left public office poorer than when he entered. Many, Many millionaires have been made in the halls of Congress.

[Gimpy]

Dear Mr. Scamp,

With all due respect. The original post seemed to exhort the posters frustration and disgust with current "business practices" that appear to be promoted and/or agreed upon by the current "political" party in the whitehouse (as this weeks news has reported) as we speak? If this does not make it arguably an "issue" for "debate" under those circumstances and conditions, what does??


As one who has some similar professional experience in the management, control of operations, capital expenditures and future equipment and manufacturing plant aquisition(s) of two (2) major newspapers and one major commericial printing company during my 30 year career in "Industrial/Production/Printing" management. I can assure you I completely understand the nuances, difficulty involved, TQM processes and management techniques & styles that produce effective and profitable results.

Both within the arena(s) of a "labor/Union" environment and a "non-Union" environment. Of which, each has it's own particular area of "pitfalls" and contractual obligations that offer very different challenges to the administration/management team instilled with task and responsibilty of producing concrete "results" that influence the overall performance, customer satisfaction, and profitability of the organization.

This does NOT however change the way I interpret the radical approach that it's "OK" to "ship" or "outsource" jobs of qualified Americans overseas to other countries simply to increase "profits" of some organizations who simple "motive" is to line the pockets of their own Corporate Chiefs and increase "profits" dramatically for greedy shareholders! At LEAST without first making an "effort" to make their organizations MORE "competitive" by utilizing the very methods you speak of??

And, to have our Governments "leaders" protect these jobs with at LEAST an effort on their part to establish tariffs, trade sanctions, rules & guidelines that would make it more of a DIS-advantage rather than an "advantage" to do so.

respectfully,

Gimp

[Seascamp]

Dear Mr. Gimpy,

I see that we are of common thought and background but are drawing different conclusions.
Currently, I?m an engineering manager specializing in turbine control and data acquisition systems and am a registered professional engineer. Our export business is over $100 billion a year and we are a fierce competitor and our product and technology saves lives and property and we do protect jobs here, sometimes painfully so. We are on the NYSE board and are known as a very ethical and socially responsible company. In terms of management style we are very conservative in terms of running the business but very liberal in terms of managing human resources. We are one of the firsts to offer total insurance coverage and benefits to significant others that are within a committed homosexual relationship with one of our employees. Plus we have a globally known social assistance charity organization that is funded and staffed at company expense.

That being said, I do not sign up for comments or accusations about supposedly greedy stock holders as a general rule. I?m a high six digit stock holder in my company and all I expect is a ROI that is more than a CD or bank savings account. I also have as much invested in Government bonds and that is a mega slow player, but very secure. So am I the enemy Mr. Gimpy? Really, do you think so?

And yes we do off-shore some products, mostly in Asia, but Russia, and South America as well. If ya want to pay $30 for a light bulb, then just build it in the USA, easy deal.

We have common cause in our mutual frustration with import-export rules and regs. Quite frankly, it sucks, all of it. But where we differ is in the roots and genesis of this entire stupid situation. This crap goes back for decades and multiple administrations and is all about the US carrot and stick method of diplomacy. In regards to this issue, I don?t see a dimes worth of difference Clinton or Bush and as I recall, Clinton drove the heck out of trade relationships with contemporary Vietnam. Not a bad call as the Vietnamese need jobs and an export market just like anyone else on this planet. So, Wall Mart has shoes and furniture from Vietnam that we couldn?t possibly afford to manufacture here. If we buy that stuff, that means we are all the enemy I guess, Idon't know. I'm outward bound from the USA to go live the life of an Ex-pat again. Some day soon I'll be with her some day soon. So my priorties and thoughts are not necessarly relavent to who hates who in the USA. God bless, peace at last.

Respectfully submitted,

Scamp

[BLUEHAWK]

Seems to me that for every decent intelligent realist creative manager like Scamp, there are about 800 avaricious greedy mean-assed bastards lining their own nests as fast as they possibly can... even at the expense of an entire nation.

Sorry, I ain't optimistic about this anymore... only because I believe the pendulum has swung wayyyyy too far out the other direction and is gonna take a lot of years to ever reach the middle again.

[Gimpy]

Mr. Scamp,

I think your first sentence says volumes about both of us. Even though I must say, I'm in more agreement than you'd probably believe about how far back this "stuff" goes.


Blue, for once it appears I'm in total agreement with your statement.

[Stick]

To change the subject to get back to the subject and I'll try not to boast. The company that I worked for spent over $60 thou. to bring me south and set up a TPM process similar to the one that we started in Cleveland. That process in Cleveland was the first time that TPM was successfully done in a union shop.
Physics tells me that I wouldn't need a mechanic if I didn't need to resist change. The company decided that since the TPM process was so good in Cleveland that they would launch that same process worldwide and I would be key in that launch with other plants. Atlanta would be the first assembly plant to change so here I came.
We got going down here in the process and there are several checkpoints that gauge how you're doing in it that you must go through. A year after I came down here I had a team set up in the plant and we petitioned for "checkpoint A." The team was reviewed by a team from corporate hq. (that I trained) and we passed that checkpoint. From that point on resistance to change kicked in but plant management still bragged that they had TPM in Atlanta. A year latter the Assistant Plant Manager came up to me and told me that the plant was going to petition for checkpoint B. I told him that the plant wasn't ready for it since it required one team in each department and the front offices didn't have a team set up yet. Tom, the Ass. Plt. Mngr. got into my face and said that "you're going to get this plant checkpoint B by providing the statistics and documentation needed but Atlanta has been running this way since 1947 and nobody but NOBODY was going to come down here from the NORTH and tell Atlanta how to run their business." I went after him. That was the last day that I worked for the car company. The VA told me to retire. I signed my retirement papers on the day that the reviewing team met here in Atlanta. I had found out from my clerk through talking with her on the phone when the reviewing team was going to be down here and made a point of going to the plant on THAT day just so I could see the reviewing team as I was in the plant. (Isn't it a coincidence that they were there on the day I had to sign my papers?)
We have to ask ourselves if we are willing to look at the way we do business and find out if there?s a better way. Who knows your job better, you or your boss? Who?s responsible for doing that job, you or your boss? Can you do it better? Change has happened in all of the jobs that we have sent overseas because we don?t want to change.
Joanne and I own a store in Fayetteville and it isn?t profitable. Fayetteville built a shopping center three years ago with a new Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart demands from its suppliers a 2% price reduction ?task? every year. How do those suppliers reduce their prices without changing the way they do business? Why is Wal-Mart the largest retailer in the U.S. and where do you shop? You buy change but resist it don?t you?

[Gimpy]

Originally posted by Seascamp


That being said, I do not sign up for comments or accusations about supposedly greedy stock holders as a general rule. I?m a high six digit stock holder in my company and all I expect is a ROI that is more than a CD or bank savings account. I also have as much invested in Government bonds and that is a mega slow player, but very secure. So am I the enemy Mr. Gimpy? Really, do you think so?

Scamp

Mr. Scamp.............after re-reading this post of yours I find it incumbent upon myself to question your judgement regarding the validity or accuracy of your comments contained therein?

I went back and re-read MY previous post (and the TOS and general rules of the forum we are "debating"on) and could find NO reference that would exclude or prevent ones opinions of "greedy stockholders" being used in the context of a "political debate" discussion?? But, more to the point.........

I NEVER accused YOU of being one of those, anywhere in my post, did I? And, in addition, no where in my post did I attempt to draw any conclusions that YOU were the enemy, did I?

If I said anything that could be interpreted the way it appears you have, I find that very unfortunate.

I really believe your comments are harse and unwarranted.

Respectfully,