Industrial Mechanical – Airliner FAR Maintenance Facilities Under Stress

Federal Aviation Regulation Certified Repair Stations have been a great business model that has been quite successful over the years. This is because airlines would rather outsource their maintenance to other companies that specialize in certain types of airplanes and certain FARs.

After oil prices hit their peaks a couple of years ago, Jet Fuel was so expensive that airlines were under extreme stress to cut costs, and most of them decided one of the best ways to cut costs was to outsource their maintenance facilities.

This caused the certified repair stations to ramp up quickly and hire as many airframe and power plant mechanics as possible, along with airframe inspection mechanics. You would think with the economic global slowdown that airlines would continue to outsource to all these facilities. And they do, however airlines have also cut out quite a bit of capacity taking airliners and parking them in the deserts.

Why the deserts? Due to the hot dry conditions that make it less corrosive on the aluminum fuselages and wings. But with fewer airplanes in the system, less maintenance is needed.

With the incredible growth of these types of companies, they have also been forced to lay off individual mechanics. Although, as the economy returns we can expect these FAR certified aircraft maintenance facilities to ramp back up to full force.

The temporary slowdown, or slow growth of profits in this sector should not be thought of as the death nail. Just like the entire travel industry, airlines, and auto industry this global slowdown and economic crisis hit every industry. This one included. Please consider all this.

An Upside for Industrial, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Sector

It seems there is a lot of talk in the United States about quality manufacturing jobs. But, to compete with other countries and their low cost of labor, many manufacturing companies are buying robotic systems, and putting forth robotic mechanized assembly lines. It’s a lot cheaper to invest in a robot, amortize the cost of that equipment over a period of time, rather than paying for union workers, their pensions, and health care benefits.

Yes, I know that sounds like a mean-spirited thing to say in this day and age, but as a businessperson anyone that wishes to make a profit, maintain shareholders equity, and grow a business has to be thinking here. Luckily, there is some good news for industrial, mechanical, and manufacturing corporations right now the United States. Orders are up, and the global economy appears to be recovering. That means there are products to be made, and buyers waiting.

The supply chain is coming back to life, and things are looking pretty good. But before you jump up for joy and assume that this means more people will go back to work. Perhaps you should consider what I have to say. Most of the manufacturing equipment being bought up right now is high-tech equipment, the kind that operates with fewer employees, not more. Indeed, there will be people who will have to run many of these machines, but they will not need the hundreds, or even thousands of people on the line to produce the same amount of goods as before.

In fact, there was a great little article recently in Industry Week titled; “Manufacturing Technology Consumption Up 138.1% – February Consumption Totaled $329 Million” written by the IndustryWeek Staff and posted on April 11, 2011. The article stated in the teaser paragraph: “February U.S. manufacturing technology consumption totaled $329.43 million, according to AMT — The Association For Manufacturing Technology and AMTDA, the American Machine Tool Distributors’ Association. This total was down 10.9% from January but up 99.3% when compared with the total of $165.31 million reported for February 2010.”

The labor costs in China are also creeping up, along with inflation there. No longer will people work for 18 to 20 hours a day, 6 to 7 days per week. That sort of slave labor isn’t going to happen anymore. Rather than one dollar a day, these folks wish to live in the middle class, and that means they need to make twelve hundred dollars per year (which will increase after China’s currency is properly reevaluated). Already, that is an increase from one dollar a day to nearly 3 dollars per day. Even China is buying more automation equipment for their factories to become more efficient. In many regards this will level the playing field for manufacturers worldwide, but it doesn’t do very much good for employment in any country.

So on one hand this is very good news for those in the manufacturing business, but for many of the union employees who have pushed very hard to increase their salaries year after year, this doesn’t mean that they will automatically be returning to work to those once previously high-paying jobs. Indeed I hope you’ll please consider all this and think on it. If you have any comments, questions, and/or concerns please shoot me an e-mail.

Prototyping and Murphy – Industrial Mechanical

For those managers and CEOs that are involved in the industrial mechanical industry, and must maintain research and development facilities that can do quick prototyping, they must understand that there will be mistakes. The Wright brothers did not fly their first successful prototype right away.

In fact, they crashed several airplanes that barely got off the ground. That was until much later that they decided to go to where there were high winds, and decent terrain, their first successful flight didn’t last very long, although it was successful.

In recent years, people have built model replicas of that prototype and they ended up crashing them. So, the first successful airplane, it seems to be almost impossible to reproduce even using the same materials.

One thing that is very important is to not to let the accountants, or the money managers run the prototyping or R&D projects or allow them to hold the keys or plug. It’s very easy to pull the plug on a very good project just because a prototype fails.

In reality, it’s not that prototypes are supposed to fail, but rather they often do. It’s what you learn from your failures that help you make something that works, and get you closer to perfection. Besides when it comes to prototyping in any industrial mechanical industry, we must realize that Murphy lives amongst us, and he is just looking for ways to prove us wrong, make our lives harder, or destroy our prototypes.

You mustn’t ever let Murphy get you down, and you must never give up if you wish to succeed. In a way this is good advice for anything you do in life, it’s just too bad people in the prototyping industry allow accountants and lawyers to hold the reins. Innovation takes risks. So please make a note of it.

Lance Winslow is a retired franchisor – Lanc

Industrial Mechanical Type Businesses and Considerations

When people think of businesses often they do not think of Industrial Mechanical type businesses and yet much of the wealth generated in this country comes from such non-thought of businesses. Most folks do not realize that making things that run our civilization is big business and there is lots of it. Consider if you will the current economic condition in the United States. Things are really hopping and there is a lot of money to be made for those who can get things made on time and right the first time.

Consider all the needs for new refineries, pipelines, ethanol plants, wind generators, construction materials, bridges, aircraft and up-grading all the tooling to make Harley Davidsons, GM Automobiles and Peterbuild Trucks? What about all those tractors, locomotives, tanker cars and military vehicles too? Some one has to design, make and manufacture all these things.

There are structural pieces, ball-bearings, fittings, valves and hundreds of thousands of machined moving parts, which must be built at specific tolerances otherwise well they just will not work. This is something that America is well suited for, getting the job and the parts right the first time. Find a need and fill an important customers desires and you win. There are a million niches to fill too from Space Shuttle parts to the next cruise ship. So, do not sell industry short when considering a business category to hang your hat on.

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