A major fire at Meridian Magnesium Products in Eaton Rapids, Mich., on May 2. Official: 'It's a miracle' only two people injured in devastating Eaton Rapids factory fire So, at the plant, 450 people out of work. Bad enough, eh? But wait Ford is shutting in both of it's F-150 assembly plants. Several thousand (7,600 to be exact) more out of work. The plant made dashboards for Ford.... oh, wait, Fiat is shutting in the entire plant for the Pacifica production. No layoffs - yet. Production of GMC Savana and Chevrolet Express big vans is closed. The list goes on. Do you have an idea of the supply chain for your job/industry???
Not everyone is in Real Estate.... As it turns out, Mark Twain was wrong. Hawaii is busy making more now...
Yes we supply to the auto industry but fortunately the other half of the plant (and the side I am on) supplies aerospace.
However, it is amazing how fast they can get plants repaired and back running if most of the equipment is intact. Seen the results of something similar before. 30 days and back partially running 6 months and 75% restored. The equipment that the incident started from was substantially damaged and not repairable. Everything else is back and they are replacing the other stuff. If the company is finacially sound and values that plant things will happen quickly to get it back online. The part where they state power had been restored to some areas of the complex and some people were back at work is a good sign.
Sure it wasn't an insurance job ? seems like it happened at just the right time or maybe not. and was it a miracle or a well formed plan.
Prime example of putting all of your eggs in one basket, or out sourcing to a single source supplier in deference to in-house manufacturing your own parts or having multiple supply sources. Exactly the issue I have with so much of our small manufacturing being done in other countries and our technological expertise being shared, if not out rightly given, to said other country's industry.
Actually from what I’ve heard that magnesium plant used to have a very good safety record until it was bought by the chinese. Now if seems to have a repeat history of major osha violations.
We have a plant in East Texas that got hit by a tornado and ripped some of the roof off, put about 3 inches of water on the roof then displaced the air handlers so it all went inside. Mammoth effort on the part of the folks there and outside contractors with people scrambling to fix stuff. It was up and running again inside 6 months, which included a massive clean as it's consumed by people.
