Modern factory floors fascinate me. There’s something about the clang and whoosh of the myriad machines, the hum of an overhead crane gliding along its tracks, the intricate yellow lines demarcating where it’s safe to walk and the ambiguous chemical aroma punctuating the air with hints of solvents or grease or paint or maybe all of them mixed together.

There’s something about the delicate dance of interdependent and interconnected parts and processes that somehow—amazingly—produce that which we and the entire world outside the factory walls often takes for granted. 

When I’m in a factory, I still get the same sense of wonder and curiosity that I had when I was 8 or 9 years old, touring the Rohm and Haas plant in Louisville, Ky. And this week, I had the opportunity to visit one of Cleveland’s (and Ohio’s, for that matter) oldest and largest manufacturing firms: Lincoln Electric.