I'd like to share with you a vision of the future. It takes place in cyberspace, and it's coming soon to a computer near you. Whether you like it or not, and whether you're ready or not, the Internet is changing the way business is conducted.
Have you ever watched the odometer on your car as you approach 100,000 miles? Something about human nature compels us to watch the odometer roll over. It may be just a fascination with numbers: Seeing all those nines line up is rare, and we don't want to miss it. but it may also have to do with the feeling of being on the verge of something that won't come again.
The carnival that is IMTS has come and gone. The aisles have been swept, and all the banners have been taken down. The fanfare of what some call the greatest machine tool show on earth has faded away.
Listen carefully these days and you'll hear a faint rumbling among the economic masses. It's probably nothing to worry about. It'll most likely go away. It's only the naysayers and skeptics who predict that the end is near. They've been doing to far almost all eight years of our current economic boom, and they've been wrong so far.
In the approximately 15 years that I have been writing editorials for Gear Technology, I've purposely avoided certain topics. Sex, religion and my own used gear machinery business are among the subjects that have always been off limits. But with this issue, I'm going to break one of my long-standing taboos by talking politics.
Every once in a while something happens to fundamentally change the nature of your business. Despite the best of intentions and the most careful planning, there's no way we can anticipate every event. What do you do, for example, when your two biggest competitors merge, when the economy collapses in the region that imports your products or when key employees leave your company? Your reactions may make the difference between success and struggling to survive.
Happy days are here again, says the old song, and given the current economic numbers, one can scarcely argue. Productivity is up; unemployment is down; inflation is practically nonexistent; the budget deficit is shrinking fast.
Notes from Detroit...Overall, Gear Expo 97, the AGMA biennial trade show, was a success. While attendance may not have been what some people had hoped for, the quality of the attendees was high. Serious buyers came and brought their checkbooks.
I sat down to write this editorial about my father, Harold Goldstein, as he approached his 80th birthday in October. I had meant it to be a celebration of his nearly 65 years in the machine tool business. Unfortunately, on August 26, as I was working on it, my father passed away after a long battle with emphysema. This editorial has now become a memorial as well as a celebration.
Economic times are good right now in America and in the gear industry. We're in the seventh year of an up cycle. The tough shake-outs of the 1980s and early 90s are over. Orders are up. Backlogs are at comfortable levels. We're looking at what promises to be the biggest, most successful trade show in the industry's history coming up in Detroit in October. The most pressing question on the immediate horizon seems to be "How long can the good times go on?"