Articles
The USA is a vast country that has a very big consumer base and is the largest economy in the world; however when it comes to manufacturing the US trails behind the world in manufacturing investment and new equipment? Part of the problem is due to high labor costs and the preference of cooperates to move manufacturing to cheaper labor countries.
Are these changes are a direct response to cheaper labor or are there other causes that influence the weakening US manufacturing? The truth is that the labor is one part of the equation, the other part is the fact that the USA market is so domestic oriented that it have major problems in adapting to marketing in other countries and with that the market loses the potential of getting a part of the growth of the developing and growing markets around the world that can benefit from the still prominent American machinery and knowhow. The USA is still using the imperial scale that seriously damages the prospect of getting to metric oriented markets and prevents the movement of business from Europe and the east to the US.
The movement of manufacturing plants to the east and South America caused a drop in demand of blue collar workers; this is the base of the economic distress affects large amount of countries in the west. The US need to be part of the growing worldwide market in order to grow, the local market is not growing fast enough and the east market are closing the skill gap to the rest of the world in a head spinning speed . Getting to be en essential part of this growth will ensure that the USA will keep some of the current manufacturing industries and can even develop some industries that will be growing rapidly.
Changing the way USA make use of Imperial scale and establishing industries that make products that will be core items to future developments around the world won't be a walk in the park but there are many tools and cases that will be good to adopt in order to optimize these processes. Cases like Germany: the German industry seldom makes basic products but established itself around the concept of quality; this is even truer when looking to manufacturing machines and more complex products.
The second is the internet; the Chinese market is much more open to the internet when it comes to B2B. The Chinese use sites like alibaba and CogMetal to conduct business much more frequently then American companies, the current web sites are general enough for their use, however to get to the more manufacturing level site that will fit also American business CogMetal can skip the differences in scale and fit the right RFQ's to the right suppliers with high precision and little mess to get much better results and save long searching times and large amounts of money. The internet can also give the American market the insight to see the need to find the growing markets in the east and make the progress to make the cutting edge in these fields.
USA is slow to recover but have the brain power and ingenuity to recover and lead the world economy. not only in banking and high tech, but also in manufacturing and other jobs that sustained the middle class in the United States in the last 50 years. All it needs is to be part of the world and lead with American made product not only locally but also beyond the ocean and south of the border.
The USA have the right tools to bring the high accuracy high complexity from around the world, however this will happen when local companies will understand that the benefits of American made products needs to be backed with the proper machinery and training, this is a problem when companies in US put major efforts in improving and creating manufacturing infrastructure in the east. Recently some major American companies declared that they intend to move manufacturing back to the USA and in doing so will give back to create the ground for the changes that must happen in order to revive manufacturing in the USA.
The last part of the manufacturing renaissance that will ensure the future of Prosperous USA is the major improvements in the rapid manufacturing techs that started to appear two decades ago, the use of new material and new printing technologies greatly improved working time and stability of the printed works, but it still have a long time to go until It's something that can change the manufacturing markets. Moreover the processes will still need to be much more efficient then normal manufacturing to encourage the move from labor oriented work in mass manufacturing to different options, rapid manufacturing have a future as manufacturing tool but it's still very far from being the tool everybody think It is.
The US need to keep its manufacturing edge not only to improve the working class and to keep the economy intact but also to keep it as a potential strategic tool in times of need. If American manufacturers won't keep up with the world and keep evolving and start to act competitively not only in the American markets but also in the rest of the world- American manufacturing will die out and with it any option of the American economy to balance the economy.
by Nadav Interstein
