A furor broke out after it was reported that the uniforms of U.S. Olympians had been manufactured in China. “They should take all the uniforms, put them in a big pile and burn them,” said an apoplectic Sen. Harry Reid.
The story tapped into the anger — and fear — that Americans feel about the loss of manufacturing to China. Seduced by government subsidies, cheap labor, lax regulations and a rigged currency, U.S. industry has rushed to China in recent decades, with millions of American jobs lost. It is these fears, rather than the Olympic uniforms themselves, that triggered the congressional uproar.
But Ralph Lauren berets aside, the larger trends show that the tide has turned, and it is China’s turn to worry. Many CEOs, including Dow Chemicals’ Andrew Liveris, have declared their intentions to bring manufacturing back to the United States.
What is going to accelerate the trend isn’t, as people believe, the rising cost of Chinese labor or a rising yuan. The real threat to China comes from technology. Technical advances will soon lead to the same hollowing out of China’s manufacturing industry that they have to U.S industry over the past two decades.
Several technologies advancing and converging will cause this.
RoboticsThe robots of today aren’t the androids or Cylons that we are used to seeing in science fiction movies, but specialized electromechanical devices run by software and remote control. As computers become more powerful, so do the abilities of these devices. Robots are now capable of performing surgery, milking cows, doing military reconnaissance and combat, and flying fighter jets. Several companies, such as Willow Garage, iRobot and 9th Sense, sell robot-development kits for which university students and open-source communities are developing ever-more sophisticated applications.
The factory assembly that China is currently performing is child’s play compared to the capabilities of the next generation of robots — which will soon become cheaper than human labor. One of China’s largest manufacturers, Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group, announced last August that it plans to install one million robots within three years to do the work that its workers in China presently do. It has found even low-cost Chinese labor to be too expensive and demanding.
Artificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence is software that makes computers, if not intelligent in the human sense, at least good enough to fake it. This is the basic technology that IBM’s Deep Blue computer used to beat chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997 and that enabled IBM’s Watson to beat TV-show Jeopardy champions in 2011. AI is making it possible to develop self-driving cars, voice-recognition systems such as the iPhone’s Siri and Face.com, the face-recognition software Facebook recently acquired.
Neil Jacobstein, who chairs the AI track at the Silicon Valley-based graduate program Singularity University, says that AI technologies will find their way into manufacturing and make it “personal”: We will be able to design our own products at home with the aid of AI design assistants. He predicts a “creator economy” in which mass production is replaced by personalized production, with people customizing designs they download from the Internet or develop themselves.
3D printingHow will we turn these designs into products? By “printing” them at home or at modern-day Kinko’s using shared public manufacturing facilities such as TechShop, a membership-based manufacturing workshop featuring manufacturing technologies now on the horizon.
“Additive manufacturing” is making it possible to cost-effectively “print” products. In conventional manufacturing, parts are produced by humans using power-driven machine tools, such as saws, lathes, milling machines and drill presses, to physically remove material until you’re left with the shape desired. This is a cumbersome process that becomes more difficult and time-consuming with increasing complexity. The more complex the product, the more labor is required and the greater the effort.
In additive manufacturing, parts are produced by melting successive layers of materials based on three-dimensional models — adding materials rather than subtracting them. The “3D printers” that produce these parts use powdered metal, droplets of plastic and other materials — much like the toner cartridges that go into laser printers. This allows the creation of objects without tools or fixtures. The process doesn’t produce waste material and there is no additional cost for complexity. Just as, thanks to laser printers, a page filled with graphics doesn’t cost much more than one with text (other than the cost of toner), with 3D printers we can print a sophisticated 3D structure for what it would cost to print something simple.
Three-D printers can already create mechanical devices, medical implants, jewelry and even clothing. The cheapest ones, which print rudimentary objects, currently sell for between $500 and $1,000. Soon, we will have printers for this price that can print toys and household goods. By the end of this decade, we will see 3D printers doing the small-scale production of previously labor-intensive crafts and goods.
It is entirely conceivable that, in the next decade, manufacturing will again become a local industry and it will be possible to 3D print electronics and use giant 3D-printing scaffolds to print entire buildings. Why would we ship raw materials all the way to China and then ship completed products back to the United States when they can be manufactured more cheaply locally, on demand?
• • •
Other advances in the next decade will likely affect manufacturing, particularly advances in nanotechnology that change the equation further. Engineers and scientists are today developing new types of materials, such as carbon nanotubes, ceramic-matrix nanocomposites and new carbon fibers. These materials make it possible to create products that are stronger, lighter, more energy-efficient and more durable than existing manufactured goods.
A new field — “molecular manufacturing” — will take this one step further and make it possible to program molecules inexpensively, with atomic precision. “Over the next two decades,” Mr. Jacobstein says, “molecular manufacturing will do for our relationship with molecules and matter what the computer did for our relationship with bits and information — make the precise control of molecules and matter inexpensive and ubiquitous.”
All of these advances play well into America’s ability to innovate, demolish old industries and continually reinvent itself. The Chinese are still busy copying technologies we built over the past few decades. They haven’t cracked the nut on how to innovate yet.
It’s a near certainty that robotics, AI and 3D-printing technologies will advance rapidly and converge. American companies already find the rising cost of labor, shipping costs and time lags, and intellectual-property protection to be major issues in doing business in China. And the Chinese government has done itself no favor by hoarding key raw materials, such as rare-earth minerals, forcing Western manufacturers to start looking for alternatives.
The mo
st advanced automobile of today — the Tesla Roadster — is already being manufactured in the United States using robotic and AI technologies. Google just announced that it will produce its highly-acclaimed Nexus 7 tablet in the United States. This is just the beginning of the trend.
So, let me predict a future headline: “Protests break out in China over 2020 Summer Olympic uniforms, 3D-printed with U.S.-made technology.”
Vivek Wadhwa is director of research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University and a fellow at the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University.
New Manufacturing Institute in Ohio
in Uncategorized/by MAM TeamAugust 16, 2012
The new initiative, which White House officials announced Wednesday, creates partnerships among manufacturing firms, universities, community colleges and nonprofit organizations in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia and will be based in Youngstown, Ohio, an area hard hit by manufacturing-job losses even before the economic recession.
“I’m pleased that we are taking steps to strengthen American manufacturing by launching a new manufacturing institute in Ohio,” Mr. Obama said. “This institute will help make sure that the manufacturing jobs of tomorrow take root not in places like China or India, but right here in the United States of America. That’s how we’ll put more people back to work and build an economy that lasts.”
The consortium will focus its efforts on developing additive manufacturing, known as 3-D printing, a new way of making products and components from a digital model. A range of industries, including defense, aerospace, automotive and metals manufacturing plan to use the new technology, and the Department of Energy estimates that the additive process would be able to save more than 50 percent in energy use compared with current manufacturing processes.
In addition to the $30 million government investment, the partnering entities will provide another $40 million to the pilot program. The Obama administration is touting the initiative as part of a plan announced in early March to invest $1 billion on a national network of up to 15 manufacturing hubs created to try to boost the manufacturing sector and encourage investment in the United States.
U.S. Mill Re-Opens To Meet China's Rising Demand For Diapers
in Uncategorized/by MAM Team“There is a huge, huge opportunity” as families in the burgeoning middle classes of China, India and other Asian countries are seeking more personal hygiene and baby care products, said Rildo Martini, IP’s vice president and general manager for pulp.
Copy paper demand in Asia has increased, but North American mills can’t compete with Asian mills in that market, because the paper can be produced more cheaply there.
But the mill on the inky Blackwater River is able to take advantage of Asia’s growing desire for fluff because it can be made only from the long, coarse fibers of loblolly pine, a fast-growing tree that thrives in the U.S. South. Its fibers are ground, boiled, bleached and pressed into puffy white material that can absorb what a baby can excrete.
IP, with headquarters in Memphis, also makes fluff at part of its mills in Pensacola, Fla., Riegelwood, N.C., and Georgetown, S.C.
During the recession, copy paper demand in North America “stopped overnight” and IP had to shutter the Franklin mill, said John Faraci, IP’s chief executive. “We had no choice,” he said. “We didn’t have any orders.”
The Franklin mill’s large operations, southern location, and proximity to a major port made it a logical candidate to restart for fluff pulp production. “We’re willing to create jobs where there is demand,” Mr. Faraci said.
The revival came none too soon for the city, whose economy had been dominated by the mill since the 1880s. Today “closed” signs in storefront windows are common. The city has had to freeze hiring and dip into reserves due to an about $1 million loss this year in tax revenue from the mill. The percentage of City of Franklin residents living below the poverty line was 22% from 2006 to 2010, more than double the state rate. Unemployment sits at 10%. When IP sought to hire 220 workers, 3,000 people applied.
Darnell Lee, 52 years old, was one of the lucky ones. He and his wife were laid off from the mill in 2009. His wife is unemployed but at least now they have one salary, he said.
“That was the best phone call I could have ever got,” said Mr. Lee, who works in the mill’s shipping department.
The mill’s 15-story power-system tower—by far the tallest building for miles—is again illuminated at night. Trucks bearing 22-ton bundles of loblolly logs rumble through the city. Giant machines are whirring and grinding as preliminary operations have begun.And that peculiar mill smell, which one resident described as “like rotten eggs times three,” wafts through area streets. Some hate it, but many residents don’t mind.
Beulah Thorpe, 69, who lives right next to the mill, said she hushes people who complain about the plant’s odor. “That is money you smell,” she said. “It is a blessing to see people working there again.”
A Banner Year For The U.S. Wind Industry
in Uncategorized/by MAM TeamAssistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
In the United States, domestic clean energy production and manufacturing competitiveness work hand-in-hand. The report finds total U.S. wind power capacity grew to 47,000 megawatts by the end of 2011 and has since grown to 50,000 megawatts, enough to power 12 million homes annually — as many homes as in the entire state of California. And as wind energy capacity has grown, more and more wind turbines and components like towers, blades, gears, and generators are “Made in America.” Nearly 70 percent of all of the equipment installed at U.S. wind farmslast year came from domestic manufacturers, doubling from 35 percent in 2005.
This summer, Energy Department leaders have traveled across the country and seen first hand how American workers and businesses are helping maintain U.S. leadership in the growing wind energy industry. In Iowa, Keystone Electrical Manufacturing Company has seen orders from the wind industry grow from almost nothing a decade ago to nearly 22 percent of gross sales, while, at ACCIONA Windpower’s West Branch assembly plant more than 100 workers are making wind turbines to sell here in the U.S. and around the world. Near Minneapolis, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 343 Union facility features a 60-foot turbine tower to help train union members for new construction, installation, and maintenance jobs.
In addition to strong gains in domestic wind manufacturing and capacity, the report finds that as wind technology improves, costs are coming down. Technological innovations are helping make longer and lighter wind turbine blades, while improving turbine performance and increasing the efficiency of power generation. At the same time, wind project capital and maintenance costs have continued to decline.
Smart investments are paying dividends across the U.S. wind industry. From Des Moines to Amarillo to Denver, the American clean energy economy is hard at work – creating jobs right now and ensuring our global competitiveness in the clean energy technologies of the future. We can’t afford to break this momentum.
This is why the Obama Administration is calling for the extension of the production tax credit (PTC). Our continued support of clean energy policies like the PTC are mission critical for America’s thriving, competitive wind industry — and shows, more than ever, the promise to create the high-paying American jobs and nationwide economic growth our country needs.
Reshoring Success: AirGuide moving manufacturing from Mexico to Clarksdale
in Uncategorized/by MAM TeamAugust 14, 2012
The project represents a company investment of $720,000, according to the Mississippi Development Authority.
AirGuide, a manufacturer of aluminum grilles, registers and diffusers for the HVAC industry and energy efficient lighting products, is consolidating its Mexico and Houston operations into the Clarksdale facility.
AirGuide said in a press statement that Ron Hudson, Hugh Jack Stubbs, Hartley Kittle and Trisha Webber as well as many other peoples from the Clarksdale-area business community “have been instrumental in AirGuide making the decision to locate in Clarksdale.”
Doug Marty, president of AirGuide, said the company thinks the new location will enable AirGuide Manufacturing and Arcalux “to better serve our customers and further improve our competitiveness manufacturing our HVAC and energy efficient lighting products.”
The Mississippi Development Authority (MDA) provided assistance for improvements to the publicly-owned building AirGuide will occupy, along with support through the Momentum Mississippi Incentives program. Coahoma County is also assisting with this project.
AirGuide manufactures a variety of products, as well as a broad range of custom-designed original equipment manufacturer (OEM) products that can be modified to suit most applications. AirGuide has been in operation for nearly 50 years.
7 Reasons to Expect US Manufacturing Resurgence
in Uncategorized/by MAM TeamYaleGlobal, 7 August 2012
It’s true that the share of manufacturing in the US GDP is now only 12 to15 percent, and the country is predominantly a service economy. But the nation is still the world’s biggest manufacturer, with unrivaled productivity in terms of manufacturing value-added per employee or per hour worked (Table 1). American manufacturing wages average $34 an hour, some 21 times the average in China at $1.60 an hour. But each US worker adds $145,000 in value, far more than German, French or Japanese employees, and more than 10 times that of the Chinese worker who contributes $13,700.
The predominant explanation is US manufacturers’ investment in automated equipment. Also, American labor is better trained than the Chinese. Similar productivity rankings can be seen in dollar value-added per hour: The US worker is on top with $73 in value-added per hour worked; the Chinese worker adds only $7.19 of value per hour; Japanese, German and French workers contribute up to $63. China outperforms the US and Europe only in “value added per dollar wages paid” – but only because hourly wages are so low in China.
> Wages of the bottom half of American workers have significantly declined in real terms over the past decade, as well as in comparison with other nations, while those of US manufacturing rivals, including China and Japan, have risen.
> American workers are working longer, faster, with greater anxiety,than ever before. Because of greater automation, flexibility, domestic US outsourcing and the fear of being laid-off, surviving US manufacturing workers have seen little or no increases in wages in the past eight years, and their output has increased with productivity in output per employee at an all-time high. Americans put in 1800 hours per year, about the same as Japanese workers (Table 2). Top is South Korea, with its corporate culture that prevents employees going home until the last boss has departed. The French and Germans, by comparison, put in 19 percent less time than Americans.
> The dollar has weakened against several major currencies over the past decade, making imports more expensive and producing in or exporting from the US more competitive, by comparison. The US is not just the world’s biggest importer but also the second largest exporter of merchandise goods (Table 3). In 2001 – the year China joined the World Trade Organization – the renminbi yuan, RMB, was 8.27 per dollar. By 2012 the currency had appreciated by more than 30 percent to 6.3 RMB per dollar. For many Chinese exporters, a breakeven exchange rate, when their exports to the US are no longer competitive, is between 5.5 to 5.8 yuan per dollar. As the RMB continues to appreciate against the dollar, more Chinese firms will abandon exports and focus on their domestic market, growing at 8 percent per annum.
> Fuel prices have more than doubled. For products with significant transportation costs, the rise in energy costs can add significantly to the cost of imports. Shipping large appliances is expensive, so Haier, a leading white goods manufacturer based in China, opened a South Carolina plant where components, shipped across the Pacific Ocean, are assembled by American workers.
> Delivery and Flexibility Pressures. For products requiring flexibility in the face of fickle fashion changes or assembly operations that require components shipped within a few days to accommodate schedules, such pressures have driven component producers to co-locate near US assembly operations.
> Natural disasters and disruptions in recent years have spooked global supply chains: Volcanoes in Iceland, overflowing rivers in Thailand and tsunamis in the Pacific Ocean idled assembly plants in the US and Europe because parts from affected regions could not be shipped. Years of cost savings at Toyota, from sourcing components from faraway locations, were wiped out by a few weeks of losses from assembly operations idled by 2011 floods in Thailand.
Of course, all indicators are not positive. Three factors could inhibit the US resurgence:
> The culture devalues science or engineering education. “Nerds,” “geeks” or “wonks” are at the bottom of the social totem pole compared to sports, film and media celebrities. A culture that emphasizes quick results and instant gratification deters students from tackling math, engineering and other challenging subjects.
> US companies lack an apprenticeship system. In other OECD nations like Germany, alternative paths in education lead to diplomas or cer
tificates in techn
ical areas, with employees trained by the company in a particular technology and then retained in well-paying careers. Some US companies are trying this approach, highlighted by G. Bussey in an April Wall Street Journal article. For example, General Electric is sending new employees for crash courses in hands-on manufacturing or sponsoring two-week summer camps at universities on lean manufacturing for high-school students.
But don’t hold your breath. Few American companies are providing apprenticeships and only in selected areas of the country. Unlike Germany, the US is a very mobile society. The average household moves every five years. In an environment where companies can easily sack workers and where workers leave for better opportunities, firms are loath to invest in worker training, only to see skilled workers leave for competing companies. The current economic slowdown, which is reducing such churn in American society and jobs, could lead to a better appreciation for the benefits of apprenticeship programs for both companies and workers.
The time is propitious for a resurgence of manufacturing in the US. Unlike the exuberance of the bubble years, new economic conditions, which may persist for years to come, suggest more sober social attitudes, more career-focused college majors, more buckling down to learn harder subjects, less churn in jobs, and greater willingness to settle for somewhat lower wages in return for company investment in worker training and greater job security. In short, some aspects of the future may look like the old days when Detroit was king and skilled technical jobs meant reasonably secure careers with a moderate middle-class living standard.
Farok J. Contractor is a professor of management and global business with Rutgers Business School.
———-
The US may be a service economy, but it’s still the world’s largest manufacturer. There are many reasons to remain bullish on US manufacturing and the American worker, suggests Farok Contractor, professor of management and global business at Rutgers Business School. US firms invest in high-tech equipment, and the US worker is tops in adding value per hour on products. Recent economic difficulties also help fuel a manufacturing resurgence: falling wages allow the US to compete with low-cost China; anxious Americans work long hours; high energy prices and an uptick in natural disasters could prompt multinationals to relocate factories closer to the big US market. Contractor also points to factors that could stall the resurgence: US students show little interest in science or engineering. And because American workers enjoy great mobility, US manufacturers hesitate to provide apprenticeships that provide state-of-the-art training. Tough economic conditions could usher in new serious attitudes on career and education choices.
– YaleGlobal
Manufacturing in America: Start of a Renaissance?
in Uncategorized/by MAM Team08/12/2012
Wages in China are rising so rapidly that the insourcing vs. outsourcing calculus has changed. In 2000, U.S. wages were almost 22 times larger than those in China. By 2015, U.S. wages will be only four times larger. Adjusted for productivity, the differential shrinks even more. In the Yangzi River Delta, the epicenter of China’s skilled manufacturing workforce, the effective wage rate will be about 61 percent of U.S. wages in 2015.
At those levels, it makes sense to return manufacturing of a wide range of goods , with moderate levels of labor content and high logistics costs, to the U.S. For an automotive part, where labor contributes one quarter of total cost, the total cost advantage for China shrivels to less than 10 percent.
Ten percent is a key threshold. When you factor in the risks and realities of doing business in China–weak intellectual property protection and rule of law, long lead times, and lack of proximity to key customers, among others–companies are willing to bring manufacturing back when the cost difference is in the single digits.
Within the next three or four years, that threshold will be crossed for seven key categories of goods: computers and electronics; appliances and electrical equipment; transportation goods; plastics and rubber; machinery; furniture; and fabricated metals. These goods account for about two-thirds of the annual $325 billion in imports from China.
The upcoming insourcing revolution is not just about rising wages in China but also the often-unheralded productivity of the U.S. The U.S. economy is 33 percent more productive than Japan and 25 percent more productive than Germany. This helps explain why Siemens is exporting gas power turbines, made in the U.S., to Saudi Arabia and Toyota has announced it would export cars made in Kentucky and Indiana to South Korea.
Economics is driving insourcing but government policy can facilitate it. Here are seven helpful steps that the U.S. government can take to create good jobs for our children and ensure the long-term success of the economy.
First, adjust tax policy to favor insourcing rather than outsourcing by providing a targeted tax credit for job creation in the U.S. and for the repatriation of funds to the U.S. that foster job creation. U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal has proposed legislation to create tax credits for re-shoring.
Second, level the playing field by addressing key trade-agreement violations and insisting on stronger IP protection and an end to currency management by the Chinese government.
Third, secure and train critical talent: retain foreign students by issuing six-month green cards in selected disciplines that become permanent upon employment; subsidize job training for new and expanded manufacturing facilities; and create “vocational colleges” that combine liberal arts education with training in such trades as welding, plumbing, electrical, and computer-assisted manufacturing.
Fourth, rethink regulations that impair competitiveness without corresponding benefit.
Fifth, facilitate the creation of industry clusters — such as Silicon Valley or, in an earlier era, Detroit — that bring together competitors, suppliers, schools, and talent to create a winning ecosystem.
Sixth, encourage foreign manufacturers to locate facilities in the U.S., the largest domestic market and one of the lowest-cost in the developed world.
Seventh, change the perception that China is low cost and the U.S. is high cost and uncompetitive. Companies should “do the math” rather than just assume China is cheaper.
More than any major economy, the U.S. responds quickly to threats. We do not curl up in a ball or complain. We adapt and we thrive. We faced down a similar threat from Japan in the 1970s and 1980s, and we are doing it again.
Hal Sirkin is Senior partner and managing director, The Boston Consulting Group (Chicago)
Manufacturing is Returning to America
in Uncategorized/by MAM TeamBy Vivek Wadhwa
But Ralph Lauren berets aside, the larger trends show that the tide has turned, and it is China’s turn to worry. Many CEOs, including Dow Chemicals’ Andrew Liveris, have declared their intentions to bring manufacturing back to the United States.
What is going to accelerate the trend isn’t, as people believe, the rising cost of Chinese labor or a rising yuan. The real threat to China comes from technology. Technical advances will soon lead to the same hollowing out of China’s manufacturing industry that they have to U.S industry over the past two decades.
Several technologies advancing and converging will cause this.
Robotics
The robots of today aren’t the androids or Cylons that we are used to seeing in science fiction movies, but specialized electromechanical devices run by software and remote control. As computers become more powerful, so do the abilities of these devices. Robots are now capable of performing surgery, milking cows, doing military reconnaissance and combat, and flying fighter jets. Several companies, such as Willow Garage, iRobot and 9th Sense, sell robot-development kits for which university students and open-source communities are developing ever-more sophisticated applications.
The factory assembly that China is currently performing is child’s play compared to the capabilities of the next generation of robots — which will soon become cheaper than human labor. One of China’s largest manufacturers, Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group, announced last August that it plans to install one million robots within three years to do the work that its workers in China presently do. It has found even low-cost Chinese labor to be too expensive and demanding.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is software that makes computers, if not intelligent in the human sense, at least good enough to fake it. This is the basic technology that IBM’s Deep Blue computer used to beat chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997 and that enabled IBM’s Watson to beat TV-show Jeopardy champions in 2011. AI is making it possible to develop self-driving cars, voice-recognition systems such as the iPhone’s Siri and Face.com, the face-recognition software Facebook recently acquired.
Neil Jacobstein, who chairs the AI track at the Silicon Valley-based graduate program Singularity University, says that AI technologies will find their way into manufacturing and make it “personal”: We will be able to design our own products at home with the aid of AI design assistants. He predicts a “creator economy” in which mass production is replaced by personalized production, with people customizing designs they download from the Internet or develop themselves.
3D printing
How will we turn these designs into products? By “printing” them at home or at modern-day Kinko’s using shared public manufacturing facilities such as TechShop, a membership-based manufacturing workshop featuring manufacturing technologies now on the horizon.
“Additive manufacturing” is making it possible to cost-effectively “print” products. In conventional manufacturing, parts are produced by humans using power-driven machine tools, such as saws, lathes, milling machines and drill presses, to physically remove material until you’re left with the shape desired. This is a cumbersome process that becomes more difficult and time-consuming with increasing complexity. The more complex the product, the more labor is required and the greater the effort.
In additive manufacturing, parts are produced by melting successive layers of materials based on three-dimensional models — adding materials rather than subtracting them. The “3D printers” that produce these parts use powdered metal, droplets of plastic and other materials — much like the toner cartridges that go into laser printers. This allows the creation of objects without tools or fixtures. The process doesn’t produce waste material and there is no additional cost for complexity. Just as, thanks to laser printers, a page filled with graphics doesn’t cost much more than one with text (other than the cost of toner), with 3D printers we can print a sophisticated 3D structure for what it would cost to print something simple.
Three-D printers can already create mechanical devices, medical implants, jewelry and even clothing. The cheapest ones, which print rudimentary objects, currently sell for between $500 and $1,000. Soon, we will have printers for this price that can print toys and household goods. By the end of this decade, we will see 3D printers doing the small-scale production of previously labor-intensive crafts and goods.
It is entirely conceivable that, in the next decade, manufacturing will again become a local industry and it will be possible to 3D print electronics and use giant 3D-printing scaffolds to print entire buildings. Why would we ship raw materials all the way to China and then ship completed products back to the United States when they can be manufactured more cheaply locally, on demand?
• • •
Other advances in the next decade will likely affect manufacturing, particularly advances in nanotechnology that change the equation further. Engineers and scientists are today developing new types of materials, such as carbon nanotubes, ceramic-matrix nanocomposites and new carbon fibers. These materials make it possible to create products that are stronger, lighter, more energy-efficient and more durable than existing manufactured goods.
A new field — “molecular manufacturing” — will take this one step further and make it possible to program molecules inexpensively, with atomic precision. “Over the next two decades,” Mr. Jacobstein says, “molecular manufacturing will do for our relationship with molecules and matter what the computer did for our relationship with bits and information — make the precise control of molecules and matter inexpensive and ubiquitous.”
All of these advances play well into America’s ability to innovate, demolish old industries and continually reinvent itself. The Chinese are still busy copying technologies we built over the past few decades. They haven’t cracked the nut on how to innovate yet.
It’s a near certainty that robotics, AI and 3D-printing technologies will advance rapidly and converge. American companies already find the rising cost of labor, shipping costs and time lags, and intellectual-property protection to be major issues in doing business in China. And the Chinese government has done itself no favor by hoarding key raw materials, such as rare-earth minerals, forcing Western manufacturers to start looking for alternatives.
The mo
st advanced automobile of today — the Tesla Roadster — is already being manufactured in the United States using robotic and AI technologies. Google just announced that it will produce its highly-acclaimed Nexus 7 tablet in the United States. This is just the beginning of the trend.
So, let me predict a future headline: “Protests break out in China over 2020 Summer Olympic uniforms, 3D-printed with U.S.-made technology.”
Vivek Wadhwa is director of research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University and a fellow at the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University.
For Some U.S. Companies, ‘Reshoring’ Jobs from China Makes 'Cents'
in Uncategorized/by MAM TeamAugust 10, 2012
“We just kind of got kicked right in the teeth dealing with China. It wasn’t any fun by any means. But it helped us learn to bring stuff back to the United States,” said Calibur11 owner Coy Christmas.
The hassle of operating abroad has triggered some companies to move production stateside, a move called “reshoring” by some. Coming home not only bolsters the speed, quality and simplicity of doing business, it’s also more economical than it used to be. Average wages in China have jumped 10 to 25 per cent a year, hitting $4 to $6 an hour in some plants. Add in shipping and high fuel costs, and offshore manufacturing is no longer such a bargain.
The return of offshore production to America has emerged as a surprising silver lining in the U.S. economic recovery. The government doesn’t track corporate reshoring efforts, but experts say they are hearing of more companies bringing work back to the States.
“Lots of very encouraging anecdotes, and obviously the more of that we see, the better off we all are,” said Alan Tonelson, researcher for the U.S. Industry and Business Council.
Since 2002, about 3.5 million manufacturing jobs have been lost nationwide. Returning jobs could create opportunities for thousands of U.S. workers.
Mark Phillips, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, said companies that have moved jobs back to the U.S., such as Calibur11 and 3M Co., have different reasons for the change. But all have discovered that operating in China, Mexico, Poland and other countries is not always rosy.
“When you are dealing across the ocean, there are logistical issues and language issues,” Phillips said. “It’s not perfect.”
Christmas called Calibur11’s experience in China a nightmare, with one vendor losing $700,000 in tooling equipment and another demanding a $150,000 “fee” to release his product.
“And then we found out our product was being sold on the black market. It’s been a horror story,” Christmas said. The company, which makes cases for popular consoles such as the Xbox 360, will now add a few employees in Duluth and many more in Chicago, where it plans to hire contractors to handle molding, assembling and packaging.
Ryan Kanne, director of the U.S. Commercial Service Office in Minneapolis, said the obstacles overseas are rising and many companies are bringing manufacturing back because of quality concerns. While it is sometimes cheaper to do business abroad, companies can keep a tighter rein on how products are made if manufacturing is done in the U.S.
“Some were subsidiaries (overseas) while others were contract manufacturing, but (companies) are bringing it back to the U.S. for quality control,” Kanne said.
Darlene Miller, owner of Permac Industries, a high-precision machine shop based in Burnsville, Minn., said her company always had quality issues in China. In 2006, she hired a Chinese contractor to make machine blades with exacting specs. But each shipment turned up flawed, with some blades not uniform, made of the wrong material, or falsely labelled “certified.” What complicated matters is that she had to buy a year’s worth of blades at a time.
Miller spent thousands on an outside testing lab, but was at her wit’s end after three years.
“We found a Wisconsin company to make the blades. And without the shipping, testing and reject costs, they actually beat the price in China,” she said.
For Dan Shimek, owner of the Outdoor GreatRoom Co. in Eagan, Minn., it became too inefficient to lean on offshoring. Shimek used to buy all his wooden pergolas from China, and fibreglass fire pits and pergolas from India. But minor problems on hardware orders created major issues, because reshipping took six weeks. And sometimes reorders on a hot product arrived too late, causing him to miss an entire season’s worth of sales.
“The impact, for sure, is tens of thousands of dollars. And the impact to cash flow for a small business can be even more dramatic than that,” Shimek said.
Today, his company makes most of its firepit and grill tables in Eagan, or orders from Minnesota firms. The change, carried out in the past two years, helped Shimek become more nimble and has added about a dozen jobs to Minnesota’s economy, either at his site or at contractors.
Some economists say reshoring will continue to add U.S. jobs, but others, including Tonelson, worry that the reshoring trend could remain largely anecdotal. “I think the offshoring craze is still going on,” he said.
Certainly conglomerates like 3M Co. continue to operate globally. But even it has brought divisions home, when it has made sense. The Maplewood, Minn.-based company said it consolidated production of its Littmann stethoscope from 14 domestic and foreign contractors to just one 3M factory in Columbia, Mo., a move that will improve efficiency for its operations.
“What we are doing is trying to shorten the supply chain,” said 3M spokeswoman Jackie Berry. “We were making pieces around the world and then consolidated, so our supply cycle fell to 50 days from 165 days.”
Calibur11’s Christmas is expecting to increase its business. The company made and sold $4.5 million worth of gaming cases last year, and this year it will make $5 million to $8 million “and we will do it right here in the United States,” Christmas said.
“I’m pumped up,” he said. “I’m looking forward to bringing us back to the United States.”
We Don't Cotton to Tax Cuts for the Rich
in Uncategorized/by MAM TeamAUG 09, 2012
North Carolina is the nation’s third-largest producer of cotton. We formed Cotton of the Carolinas with other manufacturers and farmers to promote the use of locally grown cotton in a supply chain that keeps jobs, investment and tax dollars right here in our own communities.
Our supply chain is completely transparent, from Ronnie Burleson’s farm in Richfield to his nephew’s cotton gin down the street in New London. From Hill Spinning in Thomasville to Mortex Apparel in Middlesex and back west to Statesville to MoCaro Dyeing and Finishing then back to Mortex before ending up at our company to be printed and dyed.
Years ago, I studied to be an economist at UNC-Chapel Hill, the nation’s first public university. Our public schools, colleges and universities are among the important places we can see our tax dollars at work.
When the first Bush tax cuts passed in 2001, our nation had a budget surplus and we were told the tax cuts would pay for themselves by boosting economic growth and job creation. Many people like myself thought that was bunk. You’d think the economic meltdown and large budget deficit would have shown that giving tax breaks for the best-off Americans makes them richer – it doesn’t pay for itself, it doesn’t trickle down and it doesn’t create jobs, at least not in America.
I know first-hand that investment is the key to keeping my business healthy. I know that the taxes I pay allow the government to reinvest in teachers, roads, clean water and other infrastructure and services that my business depends on to succeed.
North Carolina benefits significantly from government investment. For every tax dollar we send to Washington, we get $1.08 back in everything from supports for our cotton farmers, jobs at our military bases, investments in our national parks that bring tourists to our state, and research and education investments that support the Research Triangle.
The Senate recently passed a bill extending the Bush tax cuts on income below the $250,000 level for households. Almost everyone – 98 percent of Americans including small business owners – have income below that. The richest 2 percent would keep their tax cuts on their income below $250,000 but not their extra tax cuts above that level.
On Aug.1, the House passed a bill to extend the Bush tax cuts for 2.7 million high-income earners and pay for these tax breaks by raising taxes on Americans with less income – reducing the child tax credit, college tuition tax credit and earned income tax credit, which help 13 million working families, with 26 million children. North Carolina is home to more than half a million of these working families who would be hurt.
Taking money from the budgets of families struggling to make ends meet and giving it to the most prosperous families won’t help my business or our economy. Instead it will continue us down the path of subsidizing the already well-off instead of making the investments in our economy and our people that truly strengthen our nation and our homegrown jobs.
Eric Henry is president of TS Designs of Burlington
Manufacturing in U.S. and Nation's Future Depend on Attracting Skilled People into Field
in Uncategorized/by MAM TeamBy: By Troy A. Mills
While I could go on and on about how we got ourselves in this position, I think that most don’t need, or want, the refresher course. The good news is, that it’s not too late.
It takes about 10 years to develop into a top-level tradesman. This means we have to start now. All American manufacturers need to get involved. We need to develop or continue the development of a skilled trades “campaign.” We have to attract new people in to the industry by showing them how fascinating and exciting it is and also how important they are to the success of our nation. This could be accomplished through radio, television and print advertisements as well as job fairs.
But our job fairs need to be different than the same old folding tables, handouts and sample parts. Some companies have already started kids programs, but I think this can be expanded upon by creating summer programs and mini-programs that teach a different discipline at each session. These programs need to be geared toward our middle and high school age children.
We are only in the early stages of this and could use all the help we can get. In addition to ideas, I am also asking every company discuss this on a regular basis and decide, not if, but how much you are willing to contribute to the survival of American manufacturing.
I cannot express the importance of doing something. All of us have experienced over the past year the difficulty in finding qualified candidates. This will get worse every year, until each of us can no longer staff our companies.
This is about more than just the survival of our industry. It’s about survival of our nation, the one our great grandparents and grandparents worked so hard to build. It’s about the legacy of American manufacturing.
Let’s rebuild American manufacturing. I believe our best is yet to come.
Troy A. Mills is Vice President of Albion Machine & Tool Co. The family-owned business opened in 1927.