Two years ago, Calibur11 in Duluth did what any other cash-strapped manufacturer looking to prune costs would do: Turn to China. But the maker of game console cases is happily shifting its manufacturing operations back to the United States, discovering that doing business overseas was more trouble than it was worth. One supplier lost the […]

Last night, the Tooling and Manufacturing Association (TMA) hosted a networking event at Franchesco’s in the patio area. About 65 manufacturers from the Rockford and Chicago area met, exchanged business cards and in some cases that I observed, were in the process of getting quotations from each other. As posted earlier this was a good […]

Some time ago our politicians jumped on a frantic “Made in France” bandwagon that kicked up some dust around the question of French-made and French-bought. Their solution was simple, even simplistic: “By keeping production local, there will be less unemployment.” So simple, in fact, that you wonder why no one brought it up earlier. Buying […]

NEW YORK — Early this month I visited Tokyo to give briefings on U.S.-Japan relations to Cabinet members of the Japanese government as well as business executives of Japan’s leading multinational firms. When I asked them to assess President Barack Obama’s first term, their succinct summary was to the effect that “Osama bin Laden is […]