Posted on 12/31/2006 6:25:30 AM PST by A. Pole
AMERICAN manufacturers no longer make subway cars. They are imported now, and the skills required to make them are disappearing in the United States. Similarly, imports are an ever-bigger source of refrigerators, household furnishings, auto and aircraft parts, machine tools and a host of everyday consumer products much in demand in America, but increasingly not made here.
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the experts shifted the emphasis from production to design and innovation. Let others produce what Americans think up.
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But over the long run, can invention and design be separated from production? That question is rarely asked today. The debate instead centers on the loss of well-paying factory jobs and on the swelling trade deficit in manufactured goods. When the linkage does come up, the answer is surprisingly affirmative: Yes, invention and production are intertwined.
"Most innovation does not come from some disembodied laboratory," said Stephen S. Cohen, co-director of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy at the University of California, Berkeley. "In order to innovate in what you make, you have to be pretty good at making it — and we are losing that ability."
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Franklin J. Vargo, the association’s vice president for international economic affairs, sounds even more concerned than Mr. Cohen. "If manufacturing production declines in the United States," he said, "at some point we will go below critical mass and then the center of innovation will shift outside the country and that will really begin a decline in our living standards."
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"It is hard to imagine," Mr. Tonelson said, "how an international economy can remain successful if it jettisons its most technologically advanced components."
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
It would really hurt you alot to spend a few more bucks, out of those hundreds, to have your widgets made in the USA.
"The problem comes when the cookie cutter MBA's try to shoe horn every industry into the management fad of the day while never even glancing up from the spread sheet."
They'll bang their heads repeatedly on a brick wall if the spreadsheet says so, without ever questioning the inputs, and will smugly pat themselves on the back for their genius while doing so. Been there, done that, in the textile industry. I saw the handwriting on the wall in the mid-nineties and bailed, went into business for myself. Trouble is, now many marketing functions are migrating as well, such as photography and printing, which is my field. I'll have to reinvent myself, again; I clearly see it coming. This is just getting tiresome. And costly. I can't imagine how people with less education and/or resilience are fairing, with so much upheaval. I'll end up a broker of some kind, sending everything to China or Korea. Over half of my customers already do.
Yes it would... I would like to get the best bang for my buck.....
Not now, but if the current trend continues, the Chinese will be the only ones that make heavy duty weapons. WE couldn't start up production facilities fast enough if they decided to invade us.
We make tanks, ships, subs, missiles, guns, bullets, transporters, bombers, nukes, fighter jets, ICBMS and lasers here. That will not change. And ours will sink or destroy the chicoms versions of these very quickly.
Another one who spouts off "Buggy Whip". Again, stoplistening to Limbaugh and stop reading the WSJ op ed pages. How many times does this have to be explained. When autos replaced horse and buggys, the workers who made buggy whips simpily used their skills to start makings cars. There was little, if any retraining required, it was basically a lateral move.
"Are you saying that Romans were in the same economic system than Spanish? Yet the same general rule applies."
I'm saying no one, even during the 'globalization' of the early 20th century, was in a comparable scenario. So, no, the same general rules don't really apply. We don't have to take from someone else to grow our economy. There isn't a finite global GDP pie. We aren't a tiny population militarily subjugating our far-flung lands and drawing revenue from them. For every 'similarity' you can cite, it can either be reduced or off-set by a long line of differences.
Ask a person responsible for production if he's ever seen a product that couldn't be produced as designed. Ask someone responsible for maintenance what good design is.
There is a certain amount of feedback that goes on between production and design that is essential to innovation.
He sure did a number on the steel industry back in the 70's and 80's. Ask the average LTV retiree how he likes his pension these days.
I work in R&D for a multinational manufacturer. Our R&D site was inside our most productive plant in the U.S. and we had a great relationship with engineering and production. When they closed the plant and shipped manufacturing to Mexico, quality took a big hit, but we made more money with a 50% yield there than a 98% yield here. The problem came when R&D needed to give engineering support for operations in Mexico. It took me almost 2 years to get something done that would have been a 3 week project because of the pure incompetence of the Mexican facility to follow simple instructions. They do things in a way that's easy for each individual department without regard to the downstream effect on the rest of the operation. For R&D development, they basically did what they wanted and ignored the entire protocol. That meant doing things over and over and over. The article is spot on. No manufacturing here, then R&D gets disconnected from reality.
You have no idea what you're talking about, IMO.
Creating ready, willing and able consumers will have more positive results for our economy.
I recently read that 100% cashmere sweaters made in China are only $22.00.
I guess to your way of thinking, that means all the people in our soup lines will be warmer wearing one.
You think that there is little market for subway cars? I think you're mistaken.
Yep.
They probably never even read it.
"The last company I did drawings for, sent their drawings to China, who sent back the parts to here, where this company hired all temps to assemble the parts at less than $10 an hour, to then send the parts back to China for final assembly into refrigerators for resale in the U.S.!!"
The Chinese have zero respect for intellectual property. The time will come, when they beat you to market with a knockoff of your own product. I hear it time and again from my customers who are sourcing in China. In certain instances, it's gotten so bad that the knockoff is perceived as the original.
Yep. Hysterics about "shipping our good highpaying jobs overseas" was a plank in the Walter Mondale platform, 1984.
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