Is it the season for Italian ices yet? Perhaps not so much on the consumption end, but production is well under way at Mia Products, a frozen dessert manufacturer in Moosic, Pennsylvania. In this week’s “Cool Stuff Being Made” we get a selection of their J&J Frozen Desserts — watermelon and lime. Frozen at 40 below.

Mia belongs to the J&J Snack Foods Corp. family of companies. From the corporate profile:

J&J Snack Foods Corp. is a manufacturer, marketer and distributor of an expanding variety of nutritional, popularly priced, branded niche snack foods and beverages for the food service and retail supermarket industries. The Company is listed on the NASDAQ exchange as “JJSF”, and serves both national and international markets.

Our growing portfolio of products includes frozen soft pretzels under SUPERPRETZEL®, Pretzel Fillers® and other brand names; ICEE® frozen beverages; LUIGI’S® Real Italian Ice, Whole Fruit®; frozen juice bars under the Minute Maid®, Barq’s®, SHAPE UPS® and CHILL® brand names; TIO PEPE’S® churros; The Funnel Cake Factory® funnel cakes; and cookies under the Mrs. GoodCookie® and CAMDEN CREEK® brands.

Snacks? There’s a meal in there. And, Mia is certified organic.

Thanks to T.J. Couzens, general manager, for the tour, and to Pennsylvania Cable Network for the video footage.

From the website of Whirley Drinkworks:

Once upon a time (actually it was 1960), two entrepreneurs named Bob Sokolski and Hal Conarro started a coin-operated laundry business. They called it “Whirley Wash,” after the motion the machines made as they cleaned. Success soon followed.

It wasn’t long before Bob and Hal decided to parlay their good fortune into another arena: car washes. “Sparkle Car Washes,” a chain of coin-operated sites, was soon born. The two founders even went so far as to design their own equipment, which they began supplying to hundreds of other car washes.

Looking for a fresh challenge, Bob and Hal turned their attention to plastics. Over the next nearly four decades, their new venture, Whirley Industries, took the plastic promotional drinkware world by storm, becoming the #1 company of its kind in the country!

 

In this week’s “Cool Stuff Being Made,” Lincoln Sokolski brings up to date, walking us through the Warren, Penn., operations of the drinkware products manufacturer. Extrusion, molding, printing - yes, there’s plastic at work.

And a Spiderman angle!

Thanks to the good people of the Pennsylvania Cable Network for sharing their video documentaries for adaptation here at Shopfloor.org.

And thanks to the NAM’s Matt Preiss for the editing and posting. For more NAM videos, go to www.youtube.com/namvideo.

Bottom’s up! (Odds are good Whirley will be on the bottom of the mug.)

The mini-documentary seeries of American manufacturing, “Cool Stuff Being Made,” returns to Shopfloor.org after a production hiatus. We wanted to be sure to get back in time for sweeps.

We return with an American classic, pasta, in this case, the production of ravioli, shells, lasagna, gnocchi and the like at Scaramuzza’s Pasta Products of Clifton Heights, Penn. (Outside of Philadelphia.)

So that’s how a machine produces ravioli, eh? And 600 pounds of cheese in a day they use! (Lots of hand labor still being employed, though.)

Thanks to Bob Scaramuzza for a tour of the operations, and to our friends at the Pennsylvania Cable Network for supplying the video, grazie!

From the Washington Post, “Battle Deepens Over Union Organizing“:

In recent television ads, opponents have linked heavy unionization to job cuts and other problems afflicting the airline, steel and automobile industries.

“I really worry that this issue is a public policy disaster and political nightmare in waiting,” said political strategist Mark McKinnon.

McKinnon, who worked for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during the Republican primary season but refused to work against Obama in the general election, argued that the opposition to the issue could jeopardize the rest of Obama’s legislative agenda. “I think it has the potential to be like gays in the military was for Clinton if they try to roll this out quickly,” he said.

Weekly Standard, The Blog, “The Tale of Blagojevich, and What (If Anything) the Transition Knew“:

If the SEIU was freelancing with Blagojevich, Obama’s inclination to extend himself for Big Labor by pushing Congress on card check should shrink considerably.

You would sure hope.

It now appears the Democrats will not reach the 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filisbuster. Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic comments in “60 Might Have Mattered“:

A Republican senator, speaking to reporters this morning, offered up EFCA, the “Employee Free Choice Act” — card check — as a prime example of where Republicans would unite to fight tooth and nail against the Democrats and the Obama White House.

“We will do everything we possibly can to get every Republican on board,” the senator said.”We’re even working on Arlen,” the senator said, referring to Pennsylvania’s Sen. Specter, a reliable ally of labor unions. A few Democrats, the senator said, will be targeted…[snip]

Card check would allow workers to “show cards” at a union-sponsored event; if more than 50% of them did, then the union would be recognized as the bargaining agent for the workers. Alternatively, employees could ask for a secret ballot election, but employers would have to recognize its results. Labor unions have been salivating for card check elections, as their ranks would significantly expand because of it; Obama has promised to sign it.

Well, that’s not right. Here’s the text of H.R. 800, the Employee Free Choice Act. No meetings required. You can intimidate the employees into signing individually. Although in a small group, perhaps you could crowd them all into a room at one time and impress upon them the need to sign.

If the Board finds that a majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for bargaining has signed valid authorizations designating the individual or labor organization specified in the petition as their bar gaining representative and that no other individual or labor organization is currently certified or recognized as the exclusive representative of any of the employees in the unit, the Board shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization as the representative described in subsection (a).

(Reposting video to fix coding problem.)

A red-hot departure this week for “Cool Stuff Being Made” as we show the process of forging — a $7 billion a year industry in North America, one that employs about 45,000 people in the United States and Canada.

Forges, the result of the forging process, represents about 20 percent of the products found in durable goods. The largest pieces of forged metal can reach as long as 80 feet long, weighing a half million pounds.

We learn that there are three types of forging in commercial production: Impression die forging, representing the largest volume of forges; open die forging; and ring-roll forging.

In North America forging is a $7 billion a year industry, with forges found in durable goods representing 20 percent of products

Our thanks to the Forging Industry Association for providing the video. It’s great to be able to see forging in action, because you see the actual forged products less often. As the association’s FAQ explains, “They are normally component parts contained inside assembled items such a airplanes, automobiles, tractors, ships, oil drilling equipment, engines, missiles and all kinds of capital equipment - to name a few.” In fact, more than 18,000 forgings are contained in a 747 airplane.

Since below there’s a lengthy post surveying the debate over financial rescues and the auto industry, it’s probably worth noting again NAM statements on the issue.

NAM President John Engler on November 7 issued a statement, “NAM President stresses importance of stable auto industry in economic recovery”

The NAM’s Engler also touched on the auto industry and financing at a conference sponsored Monday by the New America Foundation. His remarks are here.

Just about two weeks out until Election Day, so the newspapers are beginning their side-by-side comparisons of the candidates. The Cleveland Plain-Dealer examined energy this weekend, a pretty good job, too, “Energy policies of Barack Obama and John McCain overlap; differences are in priorities“:

[The] energy policies espoused by Obama and McCain overlap in many areas. Like Obama, McCain touts the promise of green jobs that could be created through alternative energy. Both candidates boost clean-coal technology. Both want to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. McCain and Obama both favor offshore oil drilling and oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife refuge.

However, each stresses different priorities on energy while campaigning, says Cleveland Foundation energy expert Richard Stuebi. Obama focuses more on renewable energy and energy efficiency, while McCain emphasizes boosting supplies of fossil fuels and building more nuclear power plants, Stuebi says.

We’ll knock the Plain-Dealer for failing to mention Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Biden’s plain disavowal of clean coal, and the degree to which Senator Obama has made the oil companies a target, although Obama’s support for an investment-discouraging windfall profits tax is mentioned. (What’s the price of oil today, anyway?)

But you do only have so much space, and in the end, the Plain-Dealer gets points for including the most important disclaimer: You shouldn’t necessarily believe what the candidates say. The paper uses someone else to state the case — energy industry spokesman Frank Maisano — and frames it more diplomatically, but that’s the bottom line:

“Reality in policy making and reality in campaigning are two different things,” Maisano continued. “It is hard to tell what they are going to do until next year, when they actually have to do it.”

Elsewhere the London Times writes a piece speculating that the global financial crisis will discourage any administration from undertaking a major new environmental regulatory regime, i.e., cap and trade. The article is, “Environment will wither whoever win US election.” Because the fate of the environment depends entirely on whether the United States adopts more jobs-killing regulations.

At MacNeil Orchards in Rebersburg, Pennsylvania, the production of maple syrup stays traditional: Collect, cook and reduce, filter and bottle. From the sugar bush (the stand of maples) to the Sugar House, where processing is done, the basic manufacture of syrup — sugaring — remains the same as it has for centuries. (The Iraquois collected sap, the largest source of sweetener in their diets.)

Thanks to MacNeal Bros. for the tour of the collection and processing, which results in 150 to 200 gallons a year. Thanks, as well, to the Pennsylvania Cable Network, which produced the documentary from which this Cool Stuff video is made.

This part of the tour of C.F. Martin & Co. factory in Nazareth, Penn., takes us through the assembly to the stringing and tuning stage of the guitar manufacturing.

Want to see more? Martin also provides in-plant tours to the public (scheduled); the 175th anniversary factory tour brochure is available here.

For part I of the video tour, click here.

Thank you, Pennsylvania Cable Network!

On “Cool Stuff Being Made” this week we have Michael Brennan, vice president for sales at Monet Graphics, demonstrating step-by-step the process of taking a design and turning it into a mass-produced label. As always, there are things to learn: “The bigger the gearing, the less chaff.”

The company’s website explains:

Monet Graphics, Inc. is a specialty label manufacturer founded in 1996. Our employees and founders average 25 years experience in the flexographic printing industry. We have a 30,000 square foot state of the art manufacturing facility located in Coatesville, PA about one hour west of Philadelphia. Being a midsized company, we are able to produce high quality products while also being able to offer the lower costs, responsive service and the flexibility of a smaller company.

Eye to detail, again a critical factor in high-quality work.

To the good people at the Pennsylvania Cable Network, thanks for bringing us the original video footage.

And for more NAM videos, check out www.youtube.com/namvideo.