AP Publishes White Paper
I was privileged to work with my colleagues at AP as well as my excellent friends at Urick Foundry and AerWay in publishing a recent white paper. The topic is the Trunnion Bracket with Guard casting mentioned in an earlier post. The paper can be downloaded from the OEM Offhighway website. You might need to fill out a very brief form, but is worth the effort.
In this paper we explain how the casting conversion process enabled the designer to combine multiple assembled pieces into a single cast part. It is also an example of a collaborative effort leading to excellent results. Thanks again to the good people at AP, Urick, and AerWay!
Bloomberg Businessweek buries the lede (yes, that is spelled right, Philistines!)
Bloomberg Businessweek had a recent article titled “Companies Choose Profits Over Productivity” which explains that when “the U.S. economy emerged from the recession in June 2009, productivity was rising at a fast clip. Companies had spent the downturn cutting jobs and were lean and efficient. Productivity—output per hour worked—jumped 5.5 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier as workers did more with less. But as the recovery has chugged on, productivity growth has stalled, averaging less than 1 percent a year since 2011. Workers were actually less efficient in the first quarter of 2014, producing fewer goods and services per hour than they had during the previous quarter.” Yikes! We are living in strange times to see such conditions!
However, if you keep reading to the seventh paragraph, you will find that a “key tax break has also been downsized. Since 1983 businesses have been able to record as an expense new machinery and equipment. The result was a reduction in taxable profits. From 2010 to 2013 that amount was $500,000. But the deduction expired at the end of 2013; now companies can write off only $25,000, the lowest since 2002.”
Well, there goes five minutes of my life that I will never get back again. I could have told them that without opening the magazine. Do they pay people to write this?