Odds & Ends

From the Shop Floor — The Week in Manufacturing (5/17/2013)

The Hill reports that a political storm is brewing, at the center of which are protectionist tariffs and Chinese-made plywood, along with a quagmire of unintended consequences which could put a long-awaited and much-anticipated U.S. housing boom at risk. After carrying this nation’s economic water for four slow years’ worth of recovery, Nasdaq.com says that [...]

From the Shop Floor — The Week in Manufacturing (5/4/2013)

Way back in February, 2012, I wrote a deadly serious (and I’d like the think, moderately compelling) post asking a tough question in a rather tongue-in-cheek fashion,  Will Unions Kill the Twinkie?  This week CNBC ran a piece on pretty much the same situation some 15 months later, and asked from a slighly different perspective, Have Twinkies Killed the Union Movement?  [...]

From the Shop Floor — The Week in Manufacturing (4/19/2013)

The price of producing goods in China has so skyrocketed recently that according to at least one report outsourcing to China will cost virtually the same as producing the same goods domestically in roughly two years. Manufacturing.net, meanwhile, ponders, Is the United States Ready to Take Back Manufacturing? Brand Channel reports that for various reasons a [...]