The Greatest Time to be Living

Been hearing negative statements over and over recently. Gold Bugs and Preppers believe the world is falling apart. Each political party blames the other during election years for everything and anything.

You may hear:

• ·      Times are tough.
• ·      The economy is weakening.
• ·      Jobs are being eliminate or sent to _____
• ·      Society will fail.
• ·      Currencies are going to fall.
• ·      There will be chaos.

 “Pessimism narrows our focus, whereas positive emotions widen our attention and our receptiveness to the new and unexpected.”

– Daniel Goleman

There have always been hard times, new illnesses, conflicts, wars, poverty, and innocent people starving. Even Jesus said, “You will always have the poor”.

The truth is today is the best time to be living and tomorrow will be better:

• ·      More food is grown on less land than ever.
• ·      Medical science is conquering cancer, heart disease, aging, and developing therapies to rebuild our bodies.
• ·      Computers grow faster, smaller and double in memory every year or two.
• ·      Our phones have more computing power than the mainframes I was taught on in college.
• ·      Knowledge has gone from stored on paper to abundantly spread all over the Internet.

 Nothing goes forward in a simple, straight manner. Innovation and progress are marked with false starts, failures, crashes and disasters. But we learn and keep improving daily.

Today and tomorrow will still be inconvenient, difficult, and dangerous. But tomorrow will also be better.

“Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty.”

– Doris Day

My Job No One Knows

My first job after college was a career I never heard of. Even though my parents are engineers, never learned about Manufacturing Engineers. Am not alone, there are many careers no one knows about or understands.

Design engineers are what everyone thinks of for engineering. The people who can take a idea and create from scratch new products is what people think of engineers. (That and we drive trains and sound the whistle) Truth is even simple products need vastly different skills and talents to be made successfully.

Manufacturing has designers, design engineers, toolmakers, tool designers, industrial engineers, machine designers, planners, production mangers, and the craftsmen who put products together every day. Every small product takes a team of people to accomplish everything you touch or hold.

Manufacturing and tooling engineers are often considered second-class citizens by management. The example that comes to mind is I was in my thirties before I had desk younger than I. Sales had the fancy offices. Production is industrial. And manufacturing engineers plan, coordinate, improve and team to make it happen.

Why do it? I love it. Am fascinated by technology, products and services. The challenge of find the easiest way, the least cost, a faster way, a safer way, and to make your product better is consuming. People need help and you solve problems. You wake up at night with new ideas how.

Nothing happens instantaneously. The first version doesn’t work. The second round can’t be made as designed. The third version needs to be more reliable. And competition means the cost has to go down. There are always problems and challenges that have to be overcome. Innovation, creativity and persistance are key. You work hard to make your team succeed.

Production celebrates shipping new products like teams winning playoffs. Anything great is the result of lots of hard work.

There is a sense of accomplishment and knowing you have done what others could not with new products. New production systems may be invented, tools created specially for your product, people need to be trained, instructions and documents written, and schedules met.

Manufacturing is a great career even if no one understands what you do.

“Make Something Better.” Bill Boeing

Happy 100th Birthday Boeing

The original Pacific Aero Products Company celebrates turning 100 today. Boeing is now a huge international company known worldwide. It was originally a few men who believed they could make better airplanes, and they did. From the original B&W Model 1 to the Clipper to WW2’s B-17 to B-52 to 707’s original jet age to 727 to the iconic 747 to the great F-15 to the amazing C-17 and F-18 to today’s 787, Boeing makes wonderful airplanes.

Boeing is the 3^rd company I have worked for with over 100 years of history. Celebrated Colt Firearms 150^th anniversary, and Sargent and Company dated back to 1864 making builders hardware.

What do these companies have in common?

• ·      Innovate great products and services.
• ·      Look out for their customers & end users. They care.
• ·      Always becoming more productive.
• ·      Adapt and adjust to market conditions.
• ·      Always learning, especially from failures.
• ·      Hire and develop great people.

Boeing has “The Incredibles” who built the first 747 in ~16 months while the factory was built around them. Supervisors would sometimes have to walk people out to their cars and watch them leave to make sure they went home for a break. (You cannot pay for performance like that.)

A lot of people will honor Boeing today and it is well deserved. Boeing people “Enthusiastically Tackle Challenges” through the decades, and do so today.

This is the best company ever worked for. What took me so long to get here?

All Lives Matter

It has been a rough week. None of these make sense. Take a deep breathe:

Philando Castile should not have died in Minnesota. A man announcing he has a permit is unlikely ever to threaten a police officer with his gun. To get a permit he has to prove his law-abiding status. Why was the officer so afraid? All because a light was burnt out?

Alton Sterling was selling home made CDs outside a store where he had been selling for years. There was a complaint about him. Why would a unlicensed business be penalized more than a fine? The most he should have gotten was a ticket. Not two police wrestling him to the ground and then shooting him. He did not deserve to die.

The Dallas police were there to protect a peaceful protest. How did a lone shooter choose to kill 5, wound 7 others plus 2 civilians? He did not surrender and wanted to die fighting the police to kill more. Why Dallas police officers? 

The Dallas police have an enviable record of community policing, deescalating situations, training officers, and crime rates Chicago and Washington DC would be jealous of in a vibrant international city. They did not deserve to die.

Lets not forget the most killings this week: Suicides take twice as many lives than all other gun incidents combined.

Nor let us forget the homeless people attacked and killed in San Diego while they slept.

Banning guns will not stop crime nor suicides. If anything crime rates go up. Dallas has a high number of permit holders, and the crime rate has gone down in the years since the law was changed to allow anyone with a clean record who takes safety training a permit. 

What we need to remember is most people are good. We count on our police to deal with difficult people, drunk or high, the mentally ill, and normal civilians. Bad cops exist like bad people exist in any organization. But by and large most people should be treated with respect.

We have to become We again. You may have different views, vote for different candidates, go to different churches or no church, have different ethnicities, grew up in other countries, dress different, or like different music. Under the skin we are all people who bleed the same, hurt when we lose loved ones, and love our children.

Greet your neighbors and strangers on the street. Show respect and care. It is time to make communities, not enemies. It starts with us.

Happy 4th of July

In the US we celebrate our independence. Let’s celebrate our blessings:

• ·      Freedom of speech. We take for granted ranting and complaining about our politicians. Anyone in the public eye gets criticized. Try that in a dictatorship.
• ·      The President only is in control for 4 or 8 years. If they fail to produce, or even if they do they will be replaced when their term is up.
• ·      Three branches of government keep anyone from too much power.
• ·      Courts often defend the public from the government by applying limits.
• ·      The Constitution and Bill of Rights guide our courts.
• ·      Freedom of religion. Everywhere we travel you see churches, temples, mosques and more from everywhere.
• ·      World’s Largest Economy - close to ¼ of world’s economy.
• ·      California would be the 8^th largest economy in the world.
• ·      Diversified with manufacturing, transportation, raw materials, super computers, software, insurance, finance, services, and food to feed the world.
• ·      Inventors and entrepreneurs are celebrated. Creative people keep improving our lives.
• ·      Immigrants who come and create opportunities.
• ·      New medical discoveries and research extend our healthy life.
• ·      Crime is at record low levels throughout most of the country except for a few dysfunctional cities.
• ·      US citizens are the most generous givers all over the world in times of disaster and hardship. Look at churches ministries, Bill & Melinda Gates, and other charities helping improve lives all over the world for example.
• ·      American soldiers sacrifice to free people from tyranny all over the world. Then they come home.

The United States keeps improving our life and lives of people around the world. As difficult as life is and as imperfect as we people are, remember to celebrate our successes.

God bless the USA.