No more USA made Craftsman from Texas

[Trav]

Craftsman's $90M 'Made in USA' manufacturing plan FLOPS

In March of this year, just three and a half years after breaking ground on the 45,000 square foot factory, the company announced it was closing the plant.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[Danh]

Unfortunate and curious. Interesting the company that supplied the machinery that didn’t quite work as expected was Belorussian.

 

[slacktide_bitog]

Stanley should be able to sue the Belarusian supplier for all the costs incurred, from replacing the tooling with that from a real company, workers' salaries during the shutdown, and compensation from lost productivity.

This is telling:

Stanley had predicted the factory would make 60 million tools annually, but ex-employees said in the weeks after the shutdown that they weren’t sure if anything had made it to store shelves.

Here is a paywall-free link

 

[Elkins45]

Apologies in advance for being so cynical, but I’m guessing there are a handful of people who made a ton of money off of this failure.

 

[Trav]

My first thought was kickbacks, nothing else makes sense, the west Europeans or Japan could easily supply top shelf machines and possibly even Taiwan.

 

[BAJA_05]

Shame, the blue collar folk need --- decent jobs with decent benefits.

 

[Vern_in_IL]

So... I´m guessing they picked the lowest bidder without doing research on the company?

Robots that don´t work in 2023... is that possible? I know the Pain in rump trying to program different robot brands, Epson, Yaskawa, Motoman, Alpine an ITW company, KuKa AG, FANUC and Yamaha.

We have some low volume lines that are running adhesive channels, robots from the 2000´s. We want to reuse the hardware, but there is no support from the robot companies, should something go wrong. You have to buy new.

 

[Exhaustgases]

So to recover that loss, does that mean the tools will now cost more than Snap off?

 

[Trav]

It sounds like there wont be any USA made craftsman tools.

 

[AutoMechanic]

I never realized they were trying to make it automated. That’s dumb on their part in my opinion. I was looking forward to the new tools.

 

[JHZR2]

Lousy.

 

[HangFire]

The SK re-do failed and now the Stanley/B&D/Craftsman effort. Maybe setting up manufacturing requires actual knowledge of your equipment, and more involvement than having a VP jet-setting all over the place.

 

[Cujet]

Even the guys who really know how to make tools, Malco Eagle Grip (the old Vise Grip tools) failed to succeed at USA production.

You can still purchase these superb Vise Grips on Amazon, so there is that.

 

[cptbarkey]

This was a real shame. I would throw in what is clearly not in the article and my thoughts on the #1 reason: bad management. Obviously management still has/had control of the narriative.

 

[97K15004WD]

Manufacturing is hard. I worked at a top tier electrical products manufacturer for the first 14 years of my career. Equipment is incredibly expensive, maintenance is paramount to maintaining production.

Not a fanboy, but Tesla is doing it. It can be done, but not on the cheap.

It's not a box that just shows up and you assemble it, then produce product. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it - and it's not easy to do at scale.

 

[72C10]

It's a shame. I was looking forward to affordable US made tools by an American company.

 

[Warstud]

A little Off Topic : Meijers discontinued selling Tekton Tools and Advance Auto discontinued selling Gearwrench

 

[Kruse]

Even the guys who really know how to make tools, Malco Eagle Grip (the old Vise Grip tools) failed to succeed at USA production.

You can still purchase these superb Vice Grips locking pliers on Amazon, so there is that.

There. Fixed it for ya.

 

[Astro14]

Even the guys who really know how to make tools, Malco Eagle Grip (the old Vise Grip tools) failed to succeed at USA production.

You can still purchase these superb Vise Grips on Amazon, so there is that.

I love the Malco locking pliers.

I bought a pair for me, a pair for my brother, a pair for a buddy, and then, three more pairs just because they’re so nice. They’ll be future gifts.

 

[Astro14]

Craftsman's $90M 'Made in USA' manufacturing plan FLOPS

In March of this year, just three and a half years after breaking ground on the 45,000 square foot factory, the company announced it was closing the plant.

www.dailymail.co.uk

WSJ had a similar article. Great intentions. $90 million invested.

But the bet on robotic production for what remains an art (forging) didn’t work out.

Among many other problems, without the cost savings from that automation, it wasn’t competitive.