The Largest Tool Company Failed at Making Tools in America

The Largest Tool Company Failed at Making Tools in America
This is the story of how Craftsman tools failed to make ratchet and sockets sets in the United States.
Stanley bought Craftsman in 2017 from Sears for $900 million. They quickly began a push to manufacture products in the USA. For many of us, Made in America means something. It is not only a point of pride, but also comes with the expectation of quality.
The process of making mechanics’ tools is partially automated but still relies heavily on the manual labor of workers.
A factory in Fort Worth, Texas, was intended to manufacture wrenches, ratchets, and sockets. It was thought that automation and advanced manufacturing techniques would allow the products to be at costs similar to China. The choice to build the factory and the cost benefit analysis were based on the estimated efficiency and speed of manufacturing machines from Belarus.
Tools are manufactured by slicing a steel coil into bars called billets. These steel bars run along a conveyor belt through a heater until they glow red. A machine rolls the red hot billets into a shape and it is then placed on a press where is it pounded into a tool. The Belarusian company that makes the machines showed in videos how there was hardly any waste metal from the process. It was thought that this degree of automation and advanced machinery would reduce material costs due to waste.
The machines had to be adjusted regularly which could sometimes take weeks. The tools the machines produced were misshapen by the press. To resolve the issue, the machines would have to run at half capacity, which would make the factory much less profitable. Millions of dollars were spent trying to make the machines work correctly.
In addition to issues with the machines, older workers with vast knowledge of tool making kept retiring. The company president of global tools and storage left when the factory was announced and was succeeded by four other executives.
The factory managed to produce sockets, but did not have the ratchets and wrenches to fulfill the customer orders. Customers wanted the entire purchase order, not parts of it. They canceled their orders.
Many tools are made manually by workers who use tongs to adjust hot pieces to metal as a press smashes them into shapes. The workers move the tools from one machine to another by hand. Stanley planned to automate that process.
It is easy to undervalue the judgement and experience of a worker with decades of experience in what is seemingly a fairly simple task. Some of the tasks workers do are extremely computationally complex.
Today, Craftsman mechanics’ tools continue to be made in Asia where there is some automation but a lot of the work is from manual labor.
It is critical to keep manufacturing in the United States for several reasons. Works gain experience in machining, and figure out creative solutions to problems. This knowledge and ingenuity can be passed down to younger workers. This knowledge can help push along the development of future machines and equipment. In this way, workers and machine manufacturers can push along development and new technology. This is an intangible assets that is hard to quantify. You want this occurring in factories in the USA.
The choice of a Belarusian company suggests to be executives were trying to cut costs and take shortcuts as I would guess there were Germany and Japanese alternatives. Lukashenko has been in power in Belarus for some time and the country’s links to Russia are well known.
Works Cited:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/craftsman-america-wrench-stanley-black-decker-reshoring-factory-1125792f?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1
Tags:
craftsman, craftsman tools, tools, new craftsman tools, craftsman tools 2021, craftsman tools 2022, craftsman hand tools, milwaukee vs craftsman tools, top 10 tools, new craftsman v-series tools, top 5 tools, craftsman v-series, craftsman tool box, craftsman rp tools, lowes craftsman tools, craftsman tool haul, craftsman tool chest, craftsman tools at lowes, are craftsman tools good, craftsman power tools, craftsman tools made in usa, craftsman v20