An Eye to the Future: An Open Letter

In the last ‘Letter from the President’ Chet Poplaski referred to Bill Lehrer’s vision of 1990 with “continuous (PCM) lines competing with stamping machines”. This attractive idea should not be ignored. Already PCM has the advantage over stamping of a shorter lead time and PCM will become even more competitive if the economic break-even quantity between the two processes is increased. This can be done by the PCM industry lowering its costs per part and becoming more adept in handling longer production runs.