Spending every day in machine shops, I get a very close look at what shops have in common and what they don’t. The single greatest deficit is people. While our US economy still marches along with a high unemployment rate, the demand for skilled metalworkers is disproportionately larger than the supply. Without knowledgable metalworkers, parts don’t get programmed and machines don’t get set-up and run. All of this contributes to loss. Lost productivity, lost opportunity and lost wealth for owners and employees. The metalworker’s task is what a machine shop’s customer pays for more than anything else, and that metalworker is becoming increasingly difficult to find.