Report from the Team

As we near the end of the calendar year, we thought you might want to know a little bit more about what we’ve accomplished for our members at PMPA this year. Resources PMPA provides a host of resources to our members. Here are some highlights.

ITR provides an economic report based on the business cycle and specific leading indicators for our industry. PMPA members have benefited by seeing the larger business cycle as opposed to the urgent, but less meaningful, indicators that fill the news and distract us.

Our website provides a number of members-only tools, including a foreign, steel-grade translator to help your shop determine the appropriate U.S. grade when those jobs are reshored back here from overseas.

Our material and equipment exchange allow members a private channel to sell or acquire equipment and materials that are surplus to their needs.

Career information is available on our website that includes a career fact sheet, and a comprehensive career training database showing schools providing precision machining
training by state and province.

Advocacy

PMPA has been diligent on the issues coming out of Washington that will have a harmful effect on our shops. We have continued to work and comment on the proposed
changes to injury and illness reporting regulations that are designed to increase potential for shops to incur paperwork penalties, but fail to deliver any actual improvements in workplace safety. We have pushed back on proposals to make your OSHA 300 logs public on the internet. And we continue to watch for new developments from OSHA and
the Department of Labor.

New rules from the EPA have the potential to have the greatest financial impact, and PMPA has provided comments and worked to make clear the consequences to our small businesses. The EPA Carbon Emissions Power Plant Rule and the Ground Level Ozone Rule are only two examples. Our calculations have shown that the Carbon Emissions Rule alone could increase our total costs of production by as much as 8.8 percent of our net sales. The Ground Level Ozone Rule, which sets a standard so low that most counties where PMPA members are located are naturally unable to meet the new standard, promises to result in caps on growth of our shops, potential slowdown or curtailment of operations and reductions on our installed capacity.

We have been successful with our efforts in Congress to get the R and D tax credit and the Section 179 Bonus Depreciation implemented in past years, and we continue to work for meaningful and fair tax reform with our partners in Washington, the Franklin Partnership.

Information

As participants in a number of our surveys and reports, PMPA members have an information advantage. This year, PMPA reported shop hourly wage rates compiled from over 100 shops across the U.S. and Canada. Rates were compiled by job title and equipment operated and were then compared nationally and regionally as well as by shop sales dollars and number of employees.

Executive, administrative, professional and clerical salaries were also surveyed and reported to participants. Average, median, maximum and minimum salaries for each position reported make it easy to determine how the salaries paid by your shop compare with other shops in the industry.

PMPA Business Trends provides a monthly report on actual sales and shipment data and hours of first shift scheduled so that you can calibrate your shop’s sales performance to that of your peers. In addition, forward-looking sentiment indicators for sales outlook, lead time, profi tability and employment provide you with confi dence to pursue your objectives despite what those talking heads on the nightly news are saying.

Networking

Networking is one of the fi rst things our members will tell you that they value from PMPA. Networking, whether face-to-face at local or national meetings, or via online
listserves or groups, provides our members with the chance to get high-value interactions and information from trusted fellow members.

Our National Technical Conference, together with the Precision Machining Technology Show held in Columbus, Ohio, last April, gave almost 5,000 machinists, engineers, supervisors, purchasing agents and salesmen the perfect venue to explore the latest in processes and technology to improve operations and capabilities at their shops. Our annual meeting last month allowed the owners of a number of our member companies to network and share stories of what worked and what didn’t and recalibrate based on the experience of their longtime friends and expert speakers on the program.