Industry News

Shop Floor Automations Inc., La Mesa, Calif., is celebrating its 20th year.

Industrial parts distributor Motion Industries Inc., Birmingham, Ala., a wholly owned subsidiary of Genuine Parts Co., announced three management changes.

Rockford Systems LLC, Rockford, Ill., appointed Bill Holliday vice president of finance.

Gilman Precision USA LLC, Grafton, Wis., which manufactures customized linear and rotary motion systems, added Rich Olson to the sales force as a business development specialist.

Vero Software Ltd., Cheltenham, England, hired Wisconsin-based Applications Engineer Michael Welk to provide technical support for its Edgecam and Surfcam CAM solutions.

Compressor maker Atlas Copco Compressors LLC, Rock Hill, S.C., appointed Robert Eshelman president and general manager.

In response to the ongoing growth of its Edgecam and Surfcam brands, Vero Software Ltd., Cheltenham, England, hired Account Manager Chris Carter to represent both solutions in the Southwestern United States.

Metrology specialist Marposs Corp., Auburn Hills, Mich., appointed Francisco Flores aerospace market development manager, a new position at Marposs.

Showa Tool Co. Ltd., Tottori, Japan, and MachiningCloud Inc., Camarillo, Calif., are partnering to provide Showa Tool product data in the cloud.

While spectators filled the Berry Bowl for Logansport (Ind.) High School’s Friday night basketball game, job seekers and employers gathered in the gymnasium next door. Nearly 20 manufacturing companies, schools and other workforce organizations partnered for the high school’s first advanced manufacturing night to promote skilled trades positions available in the area. Gov. Eric Holcomb attended the event. His “Next Level Agenda” emphasizes Indiana’s need to strengthen its workforce with high-wage, high-demand jobs.

Plenty of companies need specific machining done. For some, the best bet is to buy machines and work in-house. But that actually can cause turnaround to slow down. When you have to maintain machines that are expensive, large and difficult to manage, production can hit a snag out of the blue. When production stalls, consumers and clients can grow impatient. That’s why you may want to take a different path. Companies that don’t want to deal with the hassles that come with machining in-house can benefit by sending jobs to a CNC machine shop.

A bachelor's or graduate degree is not the only route to a financially rewarding career. There are good-paying technical jobs in fields like health care and other skilled trades that require some postsecondary training, experience or education but not a college degree. Policy leaders, including the National Academy of Sciences, have made it a priority to better understand how to prepare more adults for work in these fields. Data from Gallup Inc. and Strada Education Network's Education Consumer Pulse shed light on who advises students in vocational programs about fields of study and how helpful that advice is to students.

Although millions of manufacturing jobs may need to be filled in the years to come as baby boomers continue to retire, many manufacturers already struggle with unfilled positions. One efficient way to combat the problem is by improving company websites, said Claudia Pennington, co-founder and CEO of DIY Marketing, Marietta, Pa.

Every day, it happens. Someone from Houston calls, or maybe San Francisco, peddling precision-machined parts from China. Then there are the emails from people with fake names—like Lily, Annie and Susan—overflowing my inbox with offers of low part costs and excellent service. Please, China, I don’t want to buy machined parts from you. No metal stampings. No plastic injection molds or 3D-printed prototypes. And at the risk of offending those who do, you shouldn’t either.

E-Z Burr Tool Co. will continue to operate as an independent entity out of the deburring tool manufacturer’s Livonia, Mich., facility, with little or no change in procedures or processes, reports purchaser Cogsdill Tool Products Inc., Camden, S.C. The sale closed Jan. 3.

"Politics weighs more heavily on foreign companies in China than it has in nearly three decades," writes Joe McDonald, an Associated Press business writer. "The latest flashpoint was Beijing's fury last week at hotel keeper Marriott and other companies that labeled self-ruled Taiwan a country on websites or customer materials. But companies face pressure on many sides from President Xi Jinping's more nationalistic stance and twin campaigns to tighten the ruling Communist Party's political control and have it play a direct role in business."

Why shop locally for CNC machined parts? Cam Machine says they are better, from delivery/pickup speed and part quality to the support of local businesses and the ability to have firsthand knowledge of work.

Implementing a safety management system is no small task. Because safety is highly cross-functional, you will need buy-in and support from the full business, as well as dedicated time and resources to develop a plan.

The week after CemeCon Inc. held a ribbon-cutting Jan. 17 to officially open its new 15,000-sq.-ft. headquarters and CVD diamond coating facility, I spoke with Gary Lake, company president, to discuss the expansion and developments in cutting tool coating technology. The opening marks the fourth expansion of production capabilities since the company, which is a subsidiary of Wuerselen, Germany-based CemeCon AG, was founded in 1998 and the third increase in capacity for the CVD diamond process since 2014.

The Rhode Island Manufacturers Association has chosen Henry D. Sharpe Jr. to receive the inaugural Samuel Slater Lifetime Achievement Award, writes Kate Bramson in The Providence Journal. He was a longtime president of Brown & Sharpe and the third generation of the Sharpe family to run the machine tool powerhouse.