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Mark Albert , Editor in Chief
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Job Shop Spending Expected to Rise.
Job shops plan to spend more money on machine tools and capital equipment next year than this year. That is one of the interesting—and somewhat surprising—findings of the 2008 Capital Spending Survey & Forecast, which was recently conducted by Gardner Publications, Inc., parent company of Modern Machine Shop.
Compared to figures for 2007, spending by metalcutting job shops is forecast to almost double in 2008. That’s a big jump and it was a bit unexpected by forecast analysts. According to the survey results, total spending by job shops in 2008 is projected to top $1.7 billion. The projected total for job shop spending in 2007 was $828 million.
Why the increase? Although the survey doesn’t explore the reasons, other industry observers have identified trends that explain why job shops would have more work coming their way next year and why they need to invest in additional machine tools and other manufacturing equipment.
More large U.S. companies are outsourcing component manufacturing to job shops. Boeing, for example, assembles aircraft but makes few of the components in its own facilities.
Companies outsourcing work to offshore factories are reconsidering this policy. There is a growing awareness of “the true cost of off-shoring,” especially in light of recent product recalls for quality and safety reasons. Some of the work is headed back to U.S. shops.
Costs are rising in China because of changes in government rebates program, a tightening labor market and environmental pressures.
U.S. shops are getting better at taking the labor out of production. They are becoming more cost competitive because of lean manufacturing techniques and greater automation.
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Inbox Insights
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MTConnect (www.mtconnect.org) is an open machine tool communication standard being developed by AMT—The Association For Manufacturing Technology (www.AMTonline.org). It’s reaching a critical point in its progress. It will soon need some “early adopters,” which will embrace the concept, apply it to their products, champion the cause to other vendors and promote its benefits to end users. This news is from Paul Warndorf, AMT’s VP of technology, who visited the offices of MODERN MACHINE SHOP recently.
MTConnect is designed to establish specifications for formatting and transmitting data generated by a CNC unit on a machine tool or by other types of automated factory equipment and devices.
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Inbox Insights
Getting it Through the Door
When I am interested in writing about a new type of machine tool, I like to visit a shop or plant that has a representative model in place. Getting this user’s perspective is more objective and more relevant than just picking up info from other proponents. Writing the article is more fun, too.
So typically, I talk to plant managers or shop owners on-site well after they’ve got the machine installed. Of course, the application has proven a success by then—otherwise I wouldn’t be there.
Late this summer, I had the chance to be with two shop owners BEFORE their new machine was delivered.
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Rich Marx (left) and Mike Knier stand by the FA50 wire EDM being built for them in Japan.
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NEW AT MMSONLINE
Swiss-type Turning Video
Marubeni Citizen Cincom shows you how a sliding-headstock (Swiss-type) lathe is right for certain kinds of parts.
To find the videos, go to our video archive at http://www.mmsonline.com/videos and scroll down to “Turning.” The first four articles all include video. |
OUR NEXT ISSUE
Milling & Machining Centers
The October issue of MODERN MACHINE SHOP is packed with good stuff about machining centers, both vertical and horizontal. We’ll show
- How moving them around in reconfigurable cells gives a production shop added flexibility.
- How running them unattended “opportunistically” makes sense in the high-mix, low-volume environment of a job shop.
- How using probes and artifacts can eliminate post-machining verification (and still hold dimensional tolerances to microns while totally automated).
You’ll be impressed with the real-world shops featured in these articles. We’ll also show how to do creep-feed grinding on a machining center.
Don’t miss this issue! Subscribe or renew your subscription at www.mmsonline.com/subscribe. |
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