If you think that craftsmanship is dead in America watch this video. | Eastern North Carolina Now

    In my 40 years as an industrial sales engineer, I have been in almost every kind of manufacturing plant possible from Waste Stuff to. Shineola.

    I was always amazed at the level of craftsmanship in almost every plant I visited. Even though I sold factory automation equipment, there was and still is always a place for that rare breed of worker who has a skill that honed from many years of practice and improvement.

    Late in my career, the automated robotics had replaced the mundane repetitive functions in manufacturing but it could never replace the sheer genius of a professional craftsman who could look and feel a process in his very bones.

    I never saw my job as displacing workers but more as a way to bring efficiency to the creation of a product that could lower its cost and make it available to a wider audience. Call me naïve but without continuous process improvement, almost every product on the market would cost more today. I will admit that low skill jobs were and are still being lost to automated equipment but that is the nature of progress.

    Some people used to believe that "The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad." - The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford's lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903.

    I had cards made up with an image similar to this on the backside. Sometimes it got me past the Secretary in charge of parrying pesky salesmen. Sometime it did not work. But I later found out that the card made the rounds within the office and I often got a call if for no other reason to see what kind of nut would go to that much trouble. Sales is a very unforgiving profession and you need every advantage you can get.

    Watch this link to see how quality and workmanship is still alive in New York.
The Making of a Steinway Piano

Submitted by Bobby Tony