How many people have been caught in a close down of a company ??

TOTO in Japan make a large range of complete bathrooms all made in fibre glass ! its 110 % complete to the last detail, made in take apart moduals so can be carried into a house and even up stairs and be assembled . all has snap connectors for the water fittings including the toilet waste , Has push and twist electric plugs and leveling points with lock nuts and feet to support the whole thing .
I worked for a buildier for a year when my wife and i lived in japan and did house renovations and modenising . was a real eye opener and like nothing i ever seen before of since .
Modular showers and bathrooms i first saw in a german magazine way back in the mid 1970s !! Wohen was the name of the magazine !!
China everthing is concrete like every where !!
Christchurch nz is getting held together with supporting fibregass frames !! some built to hold those brick and stone chimneys together and special framing to hold concrete structures inplace even if they crack and dont crumble completely. during an earthquake again .

 

I have had a nice experience in this department.
Company owner, a genius in inland barge design, decided he can design deep sea vessels (and quite complex ones at that, like submersible heavy weight carriers, or small passenger ships) equally well. By the way, he is completely self-educated "practical guy", a bargeman in 3d generation. As a result, when designing anything off the very specific area he has grown up, he is off target by 50% -100%-200% of displacement... . 300% and more off in necessary scantlings. I know, i did those calculations for quite a few of them.
In addition, the fateful decision did coincide with start of global economic crisis.
So, he vent out of inland cargo ship market, and never got a single order for deep sea ship.
....

 

The world will be needing a lot of caskets/coffins. Those sell for a lot of money; even pricier than boat hulls of similar materials/construction.

And you don't need to fit them out with engine mounts or lights.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNQg_P3gjIc

 

Greetings,

You really should somehow get into ownership but think small to begin, with all those company closings, the equipment and yards should come cheap, wheeling and dealing with the owners and out of work marketers.

There is a huge industrial property nearby in a city called Euclid that used to make big green trucks called "Euc -the worlds largest truck". The company went down and nothing happened for about a decade as far as heavy equipment manufacturing. Sectional tracts of the property were sold off, Lincoln Electric snapped up big portions but a number of other small businesses moved in as well.

During the 90's, Volvo's heavy industries division came in and began engineering and manufacturing key parts to their machines. They operated in that location for about 7 years and then out of the blue, they announce shutting down the facility in six months, packages are offered to relocate but many of the engineers were upset about the whole process.

Some how, 1/2 dozen or so engineers were able to buy the facility and I think the buyout packages offered by Volvo gave them startup money that they pooled together. They went back to work as the new owners and operated the business for three years until Volvo offered to buy up their company. The same facility but, now under ownership of previos employees. The sale went through and all the men involved became millionaires.

Two years later Volvo/Michigan closed the plant down again and took their names off the building. Once in a while I pass by and it seems at different times there are still heavy industry activities inside but not sure if it involves Volvo.

 

High taxation shut down boat factories in Florida. High taxation is the enemy of industry.

 

High taxation is one of the factors thats makes certain areas inhospitable for companies to do business. Eventually as is now happening, it sets off a downward spiral, governments who have never actually produced anything and lived off thier hosts, see thier revenue dropping and so think raising more taxes to fund thier liabilities will solve their problems, when in actuallity the taxes are causing more business to leave or become bankrupted further lowering thier incoming revenue.

In Cleveland there are thousands upon thousands of empty factory buildings that say for instance, a beginning boatbuilder would be happy to use to get started in business, however high business operating taxes and land taxes make it unfeasable.

Along with the banks constantly offering loans (with money created out of thin air) which are just like the subprime loans - artificially pumping up values, rather than letting the properties come down in price to reduce the company's overall production costs.

Now most of the areas look like waste land, the banks that own most of the properties, dont do anything to keep up the buildings and eventually the buildings come into disrepair and now the city is getting federal and bank grants to teardown those building trying to lower the supply rather than stepping aside and letting enterprising entrapenuers get started.

They cant do that as it would entail giving up power and giving it back to the actual wealth producers

If it wasnt for the jobs offered by those same government entities that destroyed the manufacturing companies, unempolyment in Cleveland would be 75%. They think federal money grants are going to change circumstances putting up a sign in front of a dilapidated building in a ghetto and calling it "empowerment zone". What a joke its become, when the whole deck of cards collapses, unemployment will be 100% until the free market is able to reassert itself.

If you think Im exaggerating, look at areas of Detroit that were powerhouses for wealth production - 100% wasteland now.

Banks and government killed the goose that laid the golden egg.

 

Yeah. Sort of like asking if you know how to program in COBOL. The answer is always NO.

PDW

 

.... what's a COBOL ? I might need you to do one for me.

 

Most businesses fail folks. I've had some grand failures over the years, but you have to learn somehow. I'm not sure what the percentage in the industry is, but 5 to 1 is probably about right. Simply put, out of 5 boat builders started, only 1 will exist 5 years later. Nothing new here. Work your skills set and never paint yourself into a corner.

 

Great video, some neat machinery etc.

Probably don't get to many warranty claims either.

 

I'd say no too although I remember my brother using something like that years ago

 

Well, not really wot I meant. COBOL is an old and nearly a dead language, Fibreglass is still an important technology, and has big demand for its products.

If a manager was interested in discussing fg layup techniques, or the finer points of mold releases, you would know they had at least a bit of experience.

The number one failure of IT projects, and probably a lot of other industry projects, is that the production time estimates are done on the ignorant opinion of sales guys or other non technical management.

 

Hoyt; I respectfully disagree that taxation caused the demise of Florida boatbuilders. True that the larger ones may have been burdened by DEP regulations but that was only a small part of the whole system of failures. I am unaware that the boat builder was taxed more severely than the plumbers and piano tuners.

The fifties and sixties were the boom times for Florida boatbuilders. You could sell almost anything that floated in those days. We have a much different economy now. The disparity in earning capacities have a lot to do with it. A serious bass fisherman can easily have 50 grand invested in his rig. That makes bass boats a small market enterprise. There are so many alternatives to boating, options that cost less, that the market is affected unfavorably. Then there is the mismanagement of manufacturing companies, failure to maintain quality, failure to adhere to sound business practices, and in the FRP boat business, the vagaries and volitility of the petroleum industry was and is influential. There are plenty of other reasons for failures too. Taxation is not the foremost of them.

Tunnels experience is typical in the industry for some of the reasons stated above. The Chinese builders could produce for a lower cost than the american or european builder But as Tunnels so painfully notes, they did not know what the hell they were doing. In the chinese case, perhaps they did not care either. Our Florida boat factories/shops and builders in other states, were too often begun by people who had ridden around in a boat a few times and then decided that they could build boats as well as the more knowledgeable people.. They too did not know what the hell they were doing and subsequently failed to prosper.

 

I worked at two big companies that went pop & several others, the first Thames marine built yachts & had a good name, it was a great place to work full of characters & lunatics, they ended up going bust as the owners sort of lost control of it.
Then another place near there that built catamarans, great product but bugger all quality control & hopelessly inefficient in a lot of ways, I ended up going on my own, never made much money but enjoyed it.
In the Uk we got shafted by the RCD & it pushed many small boatbuilders out of buisness. As others have said it seems everybody in officialdom has their hand out wanting money. Factory units stand empty as rents are sky high, banks either wont lend money or want rather more than a pound of flesh.
I just set up on my own and was lucky enough to blag a workshop for a year at very low overheads, i duck & dive & do other stuff to fund what i want to do, i wont borrow money as if i do that i dont own it any more. I got a couple of boats to build, with potential for some more, if it aint viable in a year i can walk away & i havent lost anything.
At least i am beholden to no one.

 

I would certainly agree with that.