From the Shop Floor — The Week in Manufacturing (4/19/2013)

The price of producing goods in China has so skyrocketed recently that according to at least one report outsourcing to China will cost virtually the same as producing the same goods domestically in roughly two years.

Manufacturing.net, meanwhile, ponders, Is the United States Ready to Take Back Manufacturing?

Brand Channel reports that for various reasons a number of foreign auto brands are looking to expand their U.S. manufacturing footprints.

The Department of Energy has announced what it is calling a Clean Energy Manufacturing Initiative.

Prime Advantage, a consortium of mid-sized manufacturers, released the results of its fifth annual survey of manufacturing CFO which says, among other things, that the sector’s steady growth will continue to move forward in the months ahead.

Supply Chain News examines how manufacturing is doing five years after the Great Recession.

Mariana Mazzucato, writing in the Toronto Globe and Mail, says that one need look no further than Apple to find a compelling reason to revamp our current system of government innovation funding.

Writing in Foreign Policy, Clyde Prestowitz tells us why manufacturing still matters.

Tire Business cites a new study which finds that the auto parts industry is the largest employer in the manufacturing sector.

The Albany (NY) Times-Union recently visited the campus of RPI in nearby Troy and offers this view of robots and manufacturing’s future.

Writing in Industry Week, Dave Blanchard says Boeing’s eastern migration offers clues as to how U.S. manufacturing can remain relevant.

When it comes to its economy, exploding middle class and manufacturing capabilities, Forbes asks, What Is China’s New Normal?

Speaking of compelling questions, along with the whole robot/technology thing, Industry Market Trends asks, Is the U.S. the Next Low Cost Manufacturing Country?

The Baltimore Sun reports on General Motors unveiling the newest version of its electric car in nearby White Marsh.

And finally, back to the question theme for a moment, Robert Atkinson in Industry Week ponders, What is the Right Course for American Manufacturing?

The Speed of Change, or Why 3D Printing Might Already Be Yesterday News


Want to know why staying ahead of manufacturing trends is now not only critical these days, but utterly essential? Or want to know just one more reason why the manufacturing today is going to look nothing like the manufacturing many of us will be doing in as little as – oh, I don’t know – say five years?

Look no further than everybody’s hot trend these days, 3D printing — or as many of my colleagues have taken to calling it, “additive manufacturing.”

But here’s the catch.  In the context of this essay, by “3D printing” I’m not talking about the brand of additive manufacturing that’s been on everyone’s lips for the past year or so, or that which has fueled imaginations in factories and corner offices throughout this country and beyond.

No, I’m talking about an entirely new generation of the stuff.  I’m talking about a breakthrough in the process that promises to be a quantum leap forward (and then some) from the additive manufacturing many in our world are (quite frankly) still having trouble wrapping their brains around.

I’m talking about a kind of 3D printing which already has scientists, engineers, designers and manufacturers who operate on the bleeding edge of technology downright giddy with excitement.

Let me explain, however briefly.

First off, it’s important to understand that today’s 3D printing is essentially mechanical in nature.  Today, you place a functioning three-dimensional object like a hammer, a universal joint, a drive shaft or even a rifle into a 3D printer, and it’s possible to “print” an exact copy of it. What you could never do until now, however, was print anything electronic, like say a smart phone, a thermostat, an audio component or a game console.

But all that is starting to change, and change in what amounts to a blur.

And the reason for this startling leap forward in the potential of 3D printing is something scientists are calling a “chiplet,” a tiny microchip no larger than a grain of sand which can be embedded into the additive manufacturing process, enabling an individual to not merely make a device never before even imagined possible, but make it by merely “printing” it out.

What will become possible are such never-before-see products as smart phones that will not break even if you sit on them, nimble, adroit robotic hands fueled by pressure-sensitive skin, automobile windshields that will control such functions as windshield wipers and internal heating and cooling, and “smart bandages” which will be able to collect data on a wound, even as they aid in the process of healing.

The difference between the old-school use of computer chips in which multiple chips are cut from the same die and placed onto a number of identical circuit boards and the principle behind a device built with countless perfectly placed and electronically linked microscopic chiplets may be subtle, but it is also downright game-changing.  In the former, the computer circuitry remains in the core of the device.  In the latter, it is integrated into the very material with which that device is manufactured.

Look, I don’t have the slightest idea what this new development will mean to manufacturers.  Given the fact, I just heard about chiplets this week, I really haven’t had time to process all the implications.

But I do know this; I’ve spent my life in manufacturing and I’ve never seen anything like what’s been going on these past few years.  Things are changing so damn fast — unbelievably faster than they ever have before — and the pace of all this change seems to be ramping up with each passing month.  Soon, it’s almost as though I’ll have to wake up early each morning just to try to make sure I’m abreast of all the things that may have changed since I went to bed.

I’ll no doubt write more about chiplets as I learn and think more about them.  But in the meantime, I’m afraid I’ll have to approach these marvels of technology with the same caveat I now apply to so many other aspects of my work life: by the time I fully understand things, there’s a good chance whatever it is I’ve just come to grips with might be well on its way to becoming just one more example of yesterday’s news.

From the Shop Floor — The Week in Manufacturing (3/5/2013)

The ISM tells us that U.S. manufacturing cooled in March somewhat.

Tim Hanley of Deliotte offers this perspective on U.S. manufacturing, including his company’s take of four critical considerations for the near and perhaps distant future; shale gas, talent shortage, tax reform and infrastructure spending.

Manufacturing in China this past month, on the other hand, hit an 11-month high.

The Washington Post reports that amid both some less than flattering manufacturing numbers for the month and a leak in a midwest pipeline that was subsequently shut down by Exxon, the price of oil dropped this week.

On the brighter side for the U.S., according to at least one report (called Markit), in Q1 we manufacturers achieved our strongest quarter in the past two years.

And here’s a blog called Sober Look that addresses the conflicting numbers in the ISM and Markit reports and the resulting confusion that now exists about the trajectory of U.S. manufacturing.

Speaking of reports, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says a recent joint one by the Aspen Institute and the Manufacturing Alliance for Productivity and Innovtion, which was very optimisitic, was met with more than a healthy dose of skepticism by many in the manufacturing community.

This one is little more than an extended ad for Goldman Sachs — in fact, that’s what it was designed to be — but it’s nevertheless a great little piece of video on the renaissance of Illinois-based Titan International, a specialty tire manufacturer and (obviously pleased) Goldman client.

Writing in the Huffington Post, Brad Wiandt, president of Madison Electric Products, claims that the missing link in U.S. manufacturing innovation is the increasingly popular concept of crowdsourcing.

MarketWatch ponders, even with the recent manufacturing-fueled job growth, just how long the trend will last.

I’m not sure what to say about this one, expect to say I’m not surprised.  Given the flood of more restrictive gun laws now on the books following the horrific shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary last year, a number of conservative legislators from certain red states have sent letters to gun manufacturers in attempt to woo them with their less restrictive gun laws and production limits.

Here’s a great report from NPR on how cheap natural gas is breathing new life into many U.S. factories.

And finally, Washington Post blogger Robert J. Samuelson reminds us that when it comes to foriegn trade, for all the “bads” it may have brought our economy, it has brought us a lot of “goods” as well.