| |
|
|
Federal Policies and National Trends in Manufacturing
The NACFAM Weekly Blog posts the top stories on
federal policies and national trends targeting the advanced manufacturing community.
Receive a summary of the news each week by email for FREE — subscribe now!
 |
|
|
NACFAM Weekly Blog
|
 |
|
 |
|
| Trading Away Productivity |  New York Times (Tonelson and Kearns) - For a quarter-century, American economic policy has assumed that the keys to durable national prosperity are deregulation, free trade and a swift transition to a post-industrial, services-dominated future.
Such policies, advocates say, drive innovation, which leads to enormous labor productivity and wage gains — more than enough, supposedly, to make up for the labor disruptions that accompany free trade and de-industrialization.
In reality, though, wage gains for the average worker have lagged behind productivity since the early 1980s, a situation that free-traders usually attribute to workers failing to retrain themselves after seeing their jobs outsourced. But what if wages lag because productivity itself is being grossly overstated, especially in the nation’s manufacturing sector? Then, suddenly, a cornerstone of American economic policy would begin to crumble...
How can we actually increase innovation and real productivity? Manufacturing, long slighted by free-market extremists, needs to be promoted, not pushed offshore, since it has historically accounted for the bulk of research and development spending and employs the bulk of American science and technology workers — who in turn spur further innovation and real productivity.
Promoting manufacturing will require major changes in tax and trade policies that currently foster offshoring, including implementing provisions to punish currency manipulation by countries like China and help American producers harmed by discriminatory foreign value-added tax systems. It also means revitalizing government and corporate research and development, which has languished since its heyday in the 1960s.
Much of government policy and business strategy rides on false assumptions about innovation, and although the Obama administration acknowledges the problem, it has done nothing to correct it. With the economy still in need of government life support and the future of American manufacturing in doubt, relying on faulty productivity data is a formula for disaster.
For more commentary and read Whistling In The Dark – Bogus Manufacturing Data by AJ over at Mfg.com
"It’s time we stopped buying into these statistics and begin to trust what we see and hear when we talk to those neighbors and drive around our towns. Manufacturing in the US certainly isn’t dead – but understanding the realities and what it will take to recover is crucial to taking the right steps to prosperity."
[Update] IndustryWeek - U.S. Productivity Increases 6.9%, however unit labor costs decreased 4.7% from the same quarter a year ago, the largest four-quarter decline since 1948. | | 3/8/2010 10:06:00 PM |
|
| Falling Behind the Clean Energy Race | Manufacture This (Capazolla) - Center for American Progress has published an interesting report, How Germany, Spain, and China Are Seizing the Energy Opportunity and Why the United States Risks Getting Left Behind by Kate Gordon, Julian Wong, and JT McLain. (Photo Source: AP/Eric Draper)
The report makes a number of key points about clean energy technology, including the steps that countries like China, Germany, and Spain are taking to grow their own wind and renewable energy manufacturing production. Of particular note are their efforts at building up the domestic content of their clean technology products. Some key points:
 - By 2020, clean energy will be one of the world’s biggest industries, totaling as much as $2.3 trillion.
- Over the past year, other countries made huge investments to seize the economic opportunity provided by the historic shift from fossil-based energy to renewable, low-waste electricity and fuel.
- These investments were…a result of intentional public policies, which in turn provided a strong stimulus for new public and private investment in new clean-energy markets, infrastructure, and human resources.
- China…has made a serious commitment to building that revolution with low-carbon, low-waste technologies and infrastructure.
- Several European Union countries—notably Germany and Spain—have also turned from old energy policies to embrace the new.
- The United States came in second just behind Germany in absolute sales in a recent global country ranking
- of 2008 clean-energy technology product sales. But when product sales were expressed as a proportion of respective gross domestic product, the United States was far down the list at 19th, compared to Germany at third, Spain at fourth, and China at sixth. The United States also lags on installed renewable energy per capita as well as per unit of gross domestic product.
| | 3/8/2010 8:51:00 PM |
|
| Networking the Green Economy |  Green Biz - This report from the Blue Green Alliance, the Sierra Club, the Communications Workers of America and the Progressive States Network, explores how technologies including smart buildings, smart grids, teleconferencing and digital education opportunities can cut carbon emissions and create and retain green jobs in the United States.
Broadband and information communication technologies have the potential of revolutionizing energy management and economic development. With less than 5 percent of the world's population, the United States accounts for about a quarter of the world's energy consumption. A poor communications infrastructure underlies much of our wasted energy use. In order to reduce energy, we must install new technologies that can monitor and more effectively use natural resources. Advanced communication will play an essential role in facilitating and integrating these technologies. | | 3/8/2010 8:39:00 PM |
|
| France Vows to Raise Manufacturing by 25% Over Next 5 Years | | IndustryWeek (Alfroy, AFP) - President Nicolas Sarkozy launched a drive on March 4 to reverse an accelerating decline in French industry, protect jobs and raise manufactured output by 25% over five years...The French leader said 6.5 billion euros (US$8.84 billion) would be assigned to support research and investment from funds raised by a special bond...He said a new national savings scheme would be set up in September to raise cash for industry and that government representatives would take a more active role in companies in which the state owns a stake. | | 3/8/2010 8:30:00 PM |
|
| Four Steps to Prepare for the Low-Plastic Future |  Green Biz (Moss) - The FDA's reversal of its decision on BPA is one more sign that the way we use plastics today may be on the verge of a significant shift...Businesses that see this future coming can minimize their risk and even gain a competitive advantage by acting now. There are four specific things companies can start doing now to prepare:
1. Map Out Your Plastic Footprint
Given that one of plastic's main charms is it cheapness, it follows that companies who rely heavily on plastics in their products or processes will face significant cost exposure if forced to substitute other materials, whether because substances are banned or because their use becomes a hot button for consumers (or because the price of plastic increases significantly).
An assessment of the usage of plastics and plastic derivatives in your company and throughout your supply chain will identify the areas of greatest usage (and potentially exposure) and is further likely to highlight opportunities for no-regrets actions to optimize material flows.
2. Identify Good Substitutes and Start Using Them Now
Exploring alternatives to the plastics you currently use is another no-regrets option. The investment required is typically quite low and the benefits can be huge: Having a clear understanding of the options and the pros and cons of each helps identify where further investigation and investment may be warranted and will set you up to make decisions around materials substitution quickly in the future...
3. Engage Your Supply Chain
Start a dialogue with your suppliers now about their use of plastic and the potential implications of a plastic phase-out. In particular, consider how plastic is used at the linkage points in the supply chain and convene the relevant players to explore options for alternatives that work well for all parties involved.
Some non-plastic solutions, such as reusable interim packaging or shipping containers, will require buy-in from and coordination with all suppliers involved at that stage in the process. Further, in some cases shared investment will either be required or will be beneficial in securing lower prices and better terms.
4. Think Systemically
Fundamentally changing the flow of materials in your operations is an enormous undertaking -- but the implications for the system of material flows as a whole is even more massive.
For many materials, their relative cost is not fixed, rather it is largely determined by the nature of their flow in the system (scale production, efficiency of processing and amount and type of by-products, end of life disposal options and costs, geographic factors and more).
As a result, it is imperative to consider the systemic context in which the material is currently produced, used and disposed of. Where barriers to potential solutions exist at the system level, firms should seize the opportunity to collaborate to overcome these hurdles and accelerate the development of solutions that benefit everyone. | | 3/8/2010 8:11:00 PM |
|
| Manufacturing Technology Consumption up 26% (Jan Yr-to-Yr) |  AMTonline - January U.S. manufacturing technology consumption totaled $130.96 million, according to AMTDA, the American Machine Tool Distributors’ Association, and AMT - The Association For Manufacturing Technology. This total, as reported by companies participating in the USMTC program, was down 40.3% from December but up 26.2% from the total of $103.77 million reported for January 2009.
“Many customers placed orders in December to take advantage of tax relief measures, pulling orders out of January 2010,” said Peter Borden, AMTDA President. “The good news is that January 2010 orders are still 26% ahead of January 2009. Fortunately, there are measures moving through Congress that will expand these benefits, incentivizing manufacturers to invest in capital equipment in 2010.” | | 3/8/2010 8:29:00 AM |
|
| 2010: Year of Recovery for Manufacturers But Not Without Fundamental Changes | IndustryWeek (Bob Parker, IDC Manufacturing Insights) - This will be the year of 'optimization', not just 'management' but finding better ways to drive out waste and maximize productivity.
- Companies will transform business models to better meet the needs of increasingly demanding customers.
- IT Organizations will look for cost structures that are more variable as they assist in making technology a focal point of business strategies.
- Manufacturing companies will begin the process of fundamentally rethinking their supply chain structures, evolving from a fixed-cost-driven supply network to a variable-cost-driven value network.
- 'Dynamic Optimization' dominates capability investment to support redefining of the supply chain.
- Manufacturers will look to better align innovation with business strategy.
- Manufacturing companies will become more mature in their use of enterprise PLM applications.
- Manufacturing companies will see factory assets as part of a fulfillment capabilities network.
- Firms will create intelligent fulfillment capabilities networks.
- Smart services and the need for persistent assets create the inflection point for RFID, sensors, and M2M.
- Armed with metrics, manufacturers move from sustainability reporting to intelligence.
Also see 2009 Predictions | | 3/6/2010 10:03:00 AM |
|
| Most Influential Sustainable Business Books |  What are the sustainable business books you need to read to be successful in the New Economy? Readers of TriplePundit.com voted and the list of most influential sustainable business books is out.
The list included some of the usual suspects–Paul Hawken appeared twice, with Natural Capitalism, largely regarded as one of the seminal works on the entire field, and Ecology of Commerce, the book Ray Anderson cited as his “Spear in the chest” wake-up call that helped him turn Interface Carpets into arguably the most sustainable large company on the planet. Michael Pollen made the list with In Defense of Food, largely regarded as one of the seminal and defining works on sustainable food. The best-selling of all the books, Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded, placed in the top ten, though not at the top, perhaps demonstrating that best-selling doesn’t necessarily translate into most influential for those of us embedded in the green economy. Cradle to Cradle and Biomimicry received a lot of votes, showing the importance of sustainable manufacturing and product design. Gil Friend, (pardon the pun), a ‘friend’ of Triple Pundit, got the second most reader votes for The Truth about Green Business, a book that aims to dispel myths about the inefficiencies of the green economy. Jared Diamond’s Collapse also made the list, perhaps demonstrating the frustration many people feel with the government of the U.S. and its short term focus, lack of commitment to future generations, and unclear strategy to move us out of the stone age. Woody Tasch made the top ten with Slow Money, a treatise on investing in local and sustainable food as a pathway out of economic and environmental ruin.
The top vote getter was Strategy For Sustainability: A Business Manifesto, a strategy book, written by Adam Werbach, former President of the Sierra Club and Global CEO of sustainability consulting firm Saatchi & Saatchi S. | | 3/6/2010 9:40:00 AM |
|
| Thinking Differently About High School Education | NAM Shop Floor Blog (Wood) - Amy Rosen, President & CEO of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, has a good summary at The Huffington Post of a promising new initiative to restructure high school education to better prepare students for higher eduction or entering the workforce, while also improving educational accountability. From “Educational Reform We Can Believe In“:
Education can be exciting. Very exciting.
Case in point — there is a new program being offered to students in 8 states — a new program that will help prepare them for college and beyond. Organized by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), the initiative will allow 10th graders to take a series of board examinations to test their mastery of basic educational requirements. If they pass, the students will have the opportunity to graduate early and attend a community college. If they fail, parents and teachers will be made aware of the basic challenges that still need to be overcome.
Either way, it’s a win-win for the students and for the rest of us who care for them now, but will depend on them later. | | 3/6/2010 9:33:00 AM |
|
| EEF Launches Manifesto for U.K. Manufacturing |  Guardian (Elloitt) - Britain's industrialists today called for an era of smart interventionism to build up the country's manufacturing base as they warned that tough measures would be needed to wean the economy off debt-dominated growth. Launching a manifesto for manufacturing, the EEF said that an incoming government should boost research into new "green" industries and identify growth sectors such as healthcare and aerospace.
The paper calls for the next government to apply themselves to creating a world-class business environment based around several pillars, including flexible labour markets, a modern tax system that does not burden productive companies with the cost fiscal consolidation, a simplification of the skills system and prioritising resources for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) in schools, investing in innovation – partly by establishing a single source of finance (an industrial bank) to support growth companies, a better energy mix and long term energy price stability, more efficient business support and lighter regulation. | | 3/5/2010 3:13:00 PM |
|
| India Establishes Funds for Clean Energy and Industrial Energy Efficiency | Scientific American (Chadha) - In a landmark announcement the Indian Finance Minister, in his annual Budget speech, put forward the proposal of setting of National Clean Energy Fund which would be constituted through tax lieved on coal usage in the country. The quantum of tax would be INR 50 per ton of coal used, which would generate an annual revenue of around $600 million.
Last year, the government also announced the National Mission on Energy Efficiency under which the most energy intensive industrial sectors would be required to energy efficiency certificates from the industries which have used less energy than the quota specified to them.
The mission includes setting up of two funds, one to provide guarantees to banks providing loans to energy efficiency projects and the other, to support investment in the manufacturing of energy-efficient products and provision of energy-efficiency services. The energy efficiency trading scheme would potentially generate transactions close to $15 billion by 2015. | | 3/5/2010 3:02:00 PM |
|
| University of Texas Launches Campus-wide Commercialization Effort |  Innovation Daily - Texas Venture Labs at The University of Texas at Austin (Texas Venture Labs) is a university-wide initiative to support technology commercialization, entrepreneurship and innovation, while providing a unique and directly applicable educational experience for participating students. Our purpose is to provide the intellectual horsepower to promote new venture creation at UT Austin, through education and mentoring; market and business plan validation; team-building and networking; and providing direct links to resources and funding.
Located in the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center, Venture Labs Texas builds on the entrepreneurial skunkworks that has long thrived at The University of Texas at Austin, adding resources, new ways for student entrepreneurs to engage, and increased channels for successful funding of new ventures.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Texas Venture Labs - Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Commercialization
Original Source: SSTI Weekly Digest
Author: Texas Venture Labs | | 3/5/2010 2:50:00 PM |
|
| Ten U.S. Senators Write to President Urging Creation of National Manufacturing Policy | Lorain Business Journal - In the letter, the senators called for a “multi-industry strategy to propel job and economic growth, one that deploys federal resources and private-public partnerships to promote emerging manufacturing opportunities.” Elements of an integrated policy strategy include “developing a highly skilled and productive workforce, investing in new and emerging technologies, ensuring stable capital markets, providing support for communities in transition, strengthening infrastructure, improving market access for U.S. exports, and fostering entrepreneurial talent.”
The letter was signed by Brown and Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.; Olympia Snowe, R-Maine; Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.; Thad Cochran, R-Miss.; Jack Reed, D-R.I.; Carl Levin, D-Mich.; Bob Casey, D-Pa.; Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.; and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.
The senators expressed support for the basic approach laid out in the Obama Administration’s framework for revitalizing American manufacturing. To read the full letter, click here. | | 3/5/2010 2:39:00 PM |
|
| DOE Offers $100 Million for Innovative Energy Research Projects |  DOE issued three Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) on March 2 that offer $100 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding for the third round of its Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) program. The FOAs, announced at the first ARPA-E summit in Washington, D.C., are focused on innovations in three areas of technology: grid storage, power converters, and cooling systems for buildings. The goal is to promote U.S. leadership in the emerging global market for these advanced energy technologies, while cutting greenhouse gas emissions and reducing U.S. electrical consumption by as much as 30%. | | 3/5/2010 1:12:00 PM |
|
| Nation's standard of living at risk |  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Nosbusch, Chairman and CEO, Rockwell Automation) - We need to act now to bolster America's industrial base. A competitive manufacturing base will avert our nation's slide to a lower standard of living in the future...
[W]e need to face the reality that change is necessary to remain the leader. Wisconsin manufacturers must be competitive in all dimensions - cost, innovation and the skills of employees...The factories of the future require more brains than brawn. Machine operators, trades people, technicians, engineers and software designers can earn a good living by adding value from their knowledge skills.
Education programs for STEM - science, technology, engineering and math - will create a pipeline for the future workforce needed in manufacturing. Improved education outcomes at all levels will lead to sustainable, value-adding careers for our citizens. We need an education system that prepares our workforce for the future.
The Manufacturing Institute and MAPI/Manufacturers Alliance report that U.S. manufacturers are burdened with structural costs that add nearly 18% to the cost of doing business here compared to our major international trading partners...Wisconsin manufacturers can overcome these hurdles and achieve growth only through innovation and productivity...
U.S. manufacturers are overcoming some cost disadvantages today by making their operations more productive...The government should pursue policies that further improve industrial productivity, but it should also demand productivity from every other sector, including services, health care, education and the government itself. Manufacturing alone cannot offset the waste in other parts of the economy.
I believe if manufacturers are going to thrive in the post-recession global economy, we must adopt smart, safe and sustainable manufacturing technologies. Smart, safe and sustainable manufacturing enables manufacturers to increase productivity and optimize their performance, thus improving their ability to compete while making better use of energy and natural resources, increasing plant safety, and enhancing product safety and quality...
We need measurable goals so we can hold our state officials accountable and regular progress reports to the citizens of Wisconsin. Government's role is to create the environment for manufacturers to thrive. A good goal would be to move up at least to the middle of the state business climate rankings. | | 3/5/2010 1:00:00 PM |
|
| Vested Outsourcing: Game-changing Rules for Outsourcing |  University of Tennessee (Vitasek) - Building stronger relationships and gaining greater value from your outsourcing relationships by moving from win-lose to win-win.
The Vested model derives its name from its hallmark collaborative approach, through which companies and their service providers gain a vested interest in each other’s success. What LEAN did for manufacturing that changed the business world in 1990, VESTED will do for outsourcing. Vested Outsourcing is a fundamental business model paradigm shift in the ways in which a company that outsource and their service providers do business.
Developed by Kate Vitasek in conjunction with the University of Tennessee, Vested Outsourcing is a new methodology by which companies that outsource and service providers can work together more effectively. They work collaboratively to develop a performance-based partnership in which both parties’ interests are aligned, and each become vested in each others’ success. | | 3/5/2010 12:38:00 PM |
|
| New Online ‘Energy Innovation Network | Kauffman Foundation has launched an online “Energy Innovation Network” to help close the gap between energy innovations and increasing consumer demand. The online network will match researchers, entrepreneurs, buyers, investors and decision-makers to support high-growth energy businesses. The network will also provide policymakers with information that will help them develop programs that can support clean energy entrepreneurship. More specifically, the Energy Innovation Network will:
- Connect entrepreneurs with researchers who can develop new technologies
- Link startups with energy buyers
- Help corporations find energy partners
- Inform states that want to enact policies that will encourage clean energy development
- Enable regions to scale state-level innovation strategies | | 3/5/2010 12:16:00 PM |
|
| The Innovation Delusion |  Huffington Post (Ralph Gomory, Research Prof. NYU, Pres. Emeritus, Alfred P Sloan Foundation, Former IBM SVP Science-Tech) - Specializing in innovation is an attractive idea, but a misleading one; an idea that blinds us to what we really need to do. We need to do more than produce exciting new ideas; we must also be able to compete in large productive industries. This requires us to both balance trade and to motivate our corporations not only to innovate, but also to produce in this country. While this is hard to do, it can be done. Specializing in innovation, though often recommended, is in fact a delusion, an alluring path that in reality will lead us straight downhill...
Today our companies are motivated to take innovations abroad, produce there and import the goods into the United States. Increasingly we can expect services also to go overseas. We must produce here in the U.S.A., to employ the people of this country, and we must keep their activities effective by a steady stream of innovations in design and production. While other countries roll out a welcome mat of tax breaks and subsidies for our companies because their common sense tells them that their people being employed in productive work is the road to being a rich country, we provide no incentive for U.S. companies to produce here.
We cannot continue to have our corporations, faithful only to the interests of their shareholders, engage in a one-way flow of jobs, technology, and innovation out of the country. We need to realize that with globalization the interests of our country and of our global corporations have diverged. We can realign the interests of corporations with those of our country by rewarding companies that are productive here. And that can be done in ways that are consistent with our history and with the limited capabilities of our government. | | 3/4/2010 3:37:00 PM |
|
| NACFAM Welcomes New Members | Rockwell Automation and Pratt & Whitney join NACFAM in 2010.
 Rockwell Automation believes that it is time for a strategy that deals head-on with the realities that we all will face in the future. It is time for governments — both in the U.S. and around the world — to join us in promoting industrial innovation for smart, safe and sustainable manufacturing. Rockwell Automation Vision for a New U.S. Industrial Strategy
 At Pratt & Whitney “green” means total care for the environment.
From the PurePower® PW1000G engine with Geared Turbofan™ technology that provides double-digit fuel burn improvements and significant reductions in emissions and noise, to our EcoPower® engine wash service, which improves efficiency, fuel burn, and reduces emissions, our company offers product and service solutions that deliver environmental performance and customer value.
 For over 20 years NACFAM has been the voice of advanced manufacturing in Washington, D.C., helping its members’ bottom line by providing projects and policy/program solutions for U.S. manufacturing in NACFAM’s four major issue areas:
- sustainable manufacturing
- workforce education and training
- process technology and innovation
- supply chain relations through network centric manufacturing (NCM)
Please consider Joining NACFAM so together we can continue to play an important role in these critical policy developments. | | 3/2/2010 8:56:00 AM |
|
| Five Gates to Innovation | strategy + business (holstein) - Corning Inc.’s process for developing inventive products actually works, a claim that few companies can make. Like other top companies, Corning has a rigorous system for managing ideas through a stage-gate process in which they are embryonic in Stage 1 and commercially marketed in Stage 5. But in Corning’s case, the system actually produces consistent results; few organizations could move a product from concept to commercial success in the short time that it took Gorilla to reach customers.
Today, after only a couple of years on the market, Corning’s cell phone glass — now known as Gorilla — is a huge success. Samsung, LG, and Motorola have placed it in three dozen handheld models, and Dell has chosen it for some of its laptops. Gorilla is selling at an annual rate of $100 million and is projected to become a $500 million business by 2015. That will make it a significant revenue stream for Corning, whose sales in 2009 totaled $5.4 billion.
What Corning appears to do better than most is insist that innovation be managed not by individual inventors or small teams in silos, begging for scraps of support from the parent corporation, but by multidisciplinary groups throughout the organization. | | 3/1/2010 2:32:00 PM |
|
|
|
| Consistent Characteristics of Competitive Manufacturers | IndustryWeek (Giffi, Vice Chairman, Deloitte LLP) - CEOs around the world say that the U.S. is no longer the most competitive location for manufacturing, says Deloitte. Working with the Council on Competitiveness, we are concluding a multi-year survey on global competitiveness in manufacturing to learn how CEOs and other senior leaders view manufacturing industry competitiveness around the world. While we won't have the final survey results until the spring, and more CEOs are responding each day, our work has already revealed findings that should cause us all to pause, take stock, and formulate a new path forward.
While this type of research will continue throughout the year, including a number of face-to-face discussions with senior manufacturing executives around the world, I can already outline several characteristics that I believe will be inherent to the leading manufacturing organizations of the future. Chief among these are:
- Global Orientation: Successful, sustainable manufacturers will be global, even if they never manufacture products outside their home nation. They will open their business processes to benefit from collaboration with partners around the world. They will pursue their markets and their customers in every corner of the world.
- Innovators and Champions of "the New": Innovation of products, processes, services, and sales will be the most important competitive differentiator of leading manufacturers around the world. The development of new products and services for new markets, as well as new products for existing customers, will be a recurring theme for best-in-class performers.
- Intersection Conductors: Innovation will occur at the intersection of ideas (intellectual capital), investment (financial capital), talent (human capital) and infrastructure (physical capital) -- and winners will outpace their rivals developing and deploying their capital through superior leadership, collaboration and technology diffusion, as well as product and service commercialization capabilities.
- Developers of Best Customer & Supplier "Assets": Leading manufacturers will not only have best-in-class suppliers but also best-in-class customers. They will derive competitive advantage from the creation of assets in the form of networks of suppliers and customers that play a significant role in innovating new products, processes and services, and commercializing them.
- Leaders in Supply Chain Effectiveness (Not Just Cost Effectiveness): Effective global supply chains will become increasingly important, while the focus on lowering labor costs will wane. As a result, the definition of productivity for winners will be inclusive of all facets of their manufacturing enterprise and interaction with their business environment.
- Sustainability & Carbon Challenge Pioneers: The energy and carbon challenge will be transformational for manufacturing competitiveness and the stimulus necessary to create a manufacturing renaissance in America, especially once the recession wanes and energy demand returns to normal. In addition, the carbon footprints of manufacturing operations and manufactured products will be increasingly important differentiators of pioneering winners.
- Masters of Risk & Resiliency: The most successful manufacturers will be both agile in confronting risks and resilient in adapting to disruptive change - in effect using it to their advantage.
- Skillful Private Sector-Public Sector Partners: Successful manufacturing enterprises will strategically partner with the public sector around infrastructure development, talent development, and research capabilities. Success for the U.S. will require coordinated State-Federal competitiveness strategies in collaboration with the private sector.
- Drivers of Dominant Regional Clusters: Regional clusters will become increasingly important and dominate success in manufacturing as both the public and private sector learn the power of focus, collaboration, and strategic choice. Leading manufacturers will collaborate with competitors, the public sector, suppliers and customers to develop such clusters.
- Creators of Value Added Jobs: Nations and manufacturing enterprises will be significantly differentiated by their focus on value added job creation as opposed to job retention. Positive manufacturing job creation will be most consistently correlated to innovation in the base of manufacturing capabilities and the creation of new enterprises.
- Winners of the Talent & Infrastructure Wars: The ultimate battleground commonly shared by both nations and manufacturing organizations will be for talent and the development and deployment of world class infrastructure. On these two issues -- talent and infrastructure -- the success of nations and manufacturing organizations are intimately tied.
What we are seeing here, especially given the increased intensity of competitiveness in the wake of the Great Recession, is that there are common factors shared among leading, successful manufacturing companies -- and, as a result, there are implications for nation-states themselves. Which brings us back to the questions at hand: How will we know which industries to nurture for the future? And how can the U.S. remain among the most competitive locations for manufacturing, and the prosperity that arises from a strong industrial base?
While the answers to these questions are still far from definitive, I'd say we already have some pretty good clues. | | 3/1/2010 1:35:00 PM |
|
| Wal-Mart's Green Mandate to Suppliers | New York Times (Rosenbloom) - Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, announced on Thursday that it would cut some 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from its supply chain by the end of 2015 — the equivalent of removing more than 3.8 million cars from the road for a year. The company plans to achieve that goal by focusing on popular product categories with the highest embedded carbon — milk, bread, meat, clothing — and by pressing its suppliers to rethink how they source, manufacture, package and transport those goods. Essentially, suppliers are being asked to examine the carbon lifecycle of their products, from the raw materials used in manufacturing all the way through to the recycling phase.
Wal-Mart’s sustainability executives will work with suppliers to help them figure out what measures to take. Any costs related to making products more energy-efficient — redesigning packaging or using a different fertilizer — will be the responsibility of each supplier, not of Wal-Mart. Jim Stanway, who oversees Wal-Mart’s supplier initiatives involving energy, said in an interview on Thursday that suppliers would be willing to spend money if “it’s an investment where everybody’s sure it makes the supplier more profitable.”
IndustryWeek - The program to reduce GHGs has three main components:
- Selection -- Walmart will focus on the product categories with the highest embedded carbon. This is defined as the amount of life cycle GHG emissions per unit multiplied by the amount the company sells. To find the embedded carbon, the ASC reviewed the GHG emissions associated with all Walmart product categories. This approach ensures the project team focuses on the categories that have the greatest opportunity for reductions. Reductions can come from any part of a product's life cycle.
- Action -- For a project to be included as part of this goal, it must reduce GHGs from a product in either the sourcing of raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, customer use or end-of-life disposal. Walmart must demonstrate it had direct influence on the reduction and show how that reduction would not have occurred without Walmart's participation.
- Assessment -- Suppliers and Walmart will jointly account for the reductions. ClearCarbon will perform a quality assurance review of those claims to ensure methodology, completeness and calculations are correct. When the claims meet the quality assurance check, PricewaterhouseCoopers will assess under consulting standards whether the defined procedures were followed consistently to quantify the reduction claim.
Walmart collaborated with Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to develop this approach that looks at the supply chain on a global scale. Other external advisers include PricewaterhouseCoopers, ClearCarbon Inc., the Carbon Disclosure Project and the Applied Sustainability Center (ASC) at the University of Arkansas. This team will identify projects, quantify reductions, engage suppliers and ensure proper procedures are followed for each GHG reduction claim. | | 3/1/2010 1:19:00 PM |
|
| The Future of Manufacturing? |  Mfg.com (AJ) - Wired magazine recently published an article by Chris Anderson titled ‘In The Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are The New Bits.’ It’s purpose is to explore emerging technologies that will move all phases of manufacturing – design, development, production, marketing and distribution – from large industrial entities into the hands of the individual. In the same ways photography and the industries that sprang up around it, Chris explains, the industrial processes and methods of ‘traditional’ manufacturing will also be shattered.
First and foremost, I urge everyone to read this article. Whether you feel its hype or spot-on, it is an extraordinarily lucid, inspired and well-written piece. (Check out this video for a great synopsis.)
But this isn’t something as new as the article implies, either. As technology has become relatively cheap, its empowered industry experts with deep domain expertise to forgo the traditional needs for ’skill’ and to concentrate almost exclusively on service. An article from 2003 that appeared in Modern Machine Shop titled ‘You Can Automate More Than You Think‘ shows clearly that the predictions Chris makes are closer than we may want to believe. This business was formed without the tooling or machining skills once required to make precise medical treatment devices, and greatly improved the time-to-market and service options for patients and providers alike.
As technology, communications and all tools that serve the design-through-manufacture chain become more elegant and affordable, it will change the ways we view and engage manufacturing. It’s that simple.
Here’s hoping we have the clarity to manage that change in ways that are productive and beneficial for everyone. If outsourcing has taught us anything, it’s that. | | 3/1/2010 1:05:00 PM |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 The National Council for Advanced Manufacturing | 2025 M Street, NW Suite 800 | Washington, DC 20036 | (202) 367-1178
|
|
|
|