Luginbill Closes

Taken from elsewhere on this site:

Luginbill Die Co., Co., Inc., a fifth-generation die business located in New Haven, Indiana, USA, is ceasing operations and will sell off all of its equipment, inventory and real estate at an auction on Wednesday, Aug. 28.

"We've been roughing it for a while," said Joy Luginbill, the company controller and wife of President Kip Luginbill, who cited competition from low-cost foreign dies as forcing them out of the market.

I have know Kip and his family for nearly 40 years. It is a shame when the company that pioneered the diamond wire drawing die is forced to close their doors because of lower labor cost imported products.

Manufacturing is coming back to America because purchasers are lerning that quality, good customer service, and quick deliveries often occur when dealing with a supplier that is closer to home. You cannot economically implement JIT when you have a a long supply line (5,000-12,000 miles away).

The message in this for every manufacturer that survives has to be a "lean,mean, fighting machine" so to speak. When everyone has similar equipment, process commodity price controlled materials, etc. then the only thing that the domestic manufacturer can do is implement the best equuipment that he can, cultivate, develope, and continually train and maintain good employees, implement Lean, Six Sigma, and sustainability programs, and provide the highes level of customer service/relations, quick delivery, and fair prices and leadership not just management. (Not advertising, however these area areas that we can provide assistance.)

These are not guarantees that you will suceed but these are the strategies that can help you get your company heading and moving in a direction that can lead to a successful tomorrow.

I wish Kip and Joy a great retirement, fully knowing that the wire industry is losing a valuable part of it's history and that is not a good thing.

Richard Burke

Global Sourcing versus Local Sourcing - trial and error principle to find the royal road ?

In the last twenty years the technical department within a company has lost in importance ...
(Euler, Gauss, Laplace, d´Alambert, Bernoulli, L´Hospital, Poisson, Newton, etc. - background)
-> "yes or no" ; "right or wrong" - decisions

Business administration (especially purchase management / buying department) gained in importance ...
(Drucker, Walras, Pareto, Maslow, Samuelson, Leontief, Friedman, etc. - background, of course, also here in this forum mentioned Charles Kepner and Benjamin Tregoe)
-> "maybe or maybe not" ; "it depends of ... " - decisions

When I studied industrial engineering our lecturer in purchase management told us students :

"Long time ago If you answer this two questions "yes" -> can you read ? can you write ?

-> then -> ... go to the purchase department ... today you will find on this position engineers and people with Ph.D. "

... each company must find its royal road ...

I've read most all of what those people had or have to say and in the end; the person with an obligation to stockholders an with an overblown salary in the majority of cases doesn't give a wit about where his company purchases supplies and the long range affect. Many years ago when I worked for another company I was in Japan meeting with our representative there. His father was an American born Japanese and worked for the US State Dept. and was stationed in Japan when WWII started. During the war he and his native born wife and son, Toshio were imprisoned as enemy nationalist just as many of Japanese desent were impounded in the USA. Later Toshio was educated at GA Tech and Stanford. He said (in the 1980's) that before we purchase anything we give the purchase a test:
1) will this purhase hurt my neighbor? 2) will it hurt the company I work for? 3) will it hurt my country? If it passes all these questions then you bought it. A no to any question meant that you did not buy it.

I don;t know if they still think like this but if even a little consideration was given to these questions things would change.

I am aware of what the I means in WAI but I also know that service, quality, and dependabllilty are important in a supplier and vendor.