Manufacturing is returning to America

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/manufacturing-is-returning-to-america-648616/

by ph0rque • 14 years ago

49 25 14 years ago

post-gazette.com

mparlane2• 14 years ago

Who would 3d print uniforms?

vacri• 14 years ago

Lego minifigs?

mparlane2• 14 years ago

Chinese Olympic Lego minifigs!

zacharycohn• 14 years ago

So this article suggests we're bringing manufacturing back to America, but it's pretty light on pointing out that none of these methods will create any of the types of jobs that the departure of manufacturing took away - which I suspect is one of the root causes of a lot of the issues with things made in China.

sunir• 14 years ago

Manufacturing output in the United States generally increases over time, but output is generated through gains in productivity from automation (e.g. robots). Therefore, the absolute number of jobs in the manufacturing sector has been steadily declining as well and will continue to do so both here and in China.

http://mercatus.org/publication/us-manufacturing-output-vs-j...

In fact, Foxconn itself is rapidly increasing its robot workforce from 10,000 robots to a goal of 1 million robots by 2014.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-07/30/c_131...

hkmurakami3• 14 years ago

Manufacturing capacity is a matter of national security imo and it's important for the country to maintain and increase it. However I'm wondering about the very basic manufacturing / raw material production capacity within the United States. Yes, there is Alcoa, the largest Aluminum producer in the world, but does the country actually have the ability to produce basic building blocks like nuts, bolts, sheet metal, steel beams, wiring, etc from the ground up if such a need came up in the future? (though one would hope that such a need would never arise in the future)

bazookaBen• 14 years ago

where are the charts? i'm not buying an article without numbers

nhebb• 14 years ago

I get the sense with Vivek Wadhwa articles that he takes a few anecdotes and generalizes them into a larger trend. He's an imaginative guy, but many of his theories are wildly speculative and lack data.

ballooney• 14 years ago

Well done for commenting though (I mean it, no snark coming). A lot of the current crop of singularity-ey, TED-ey, 'digital revolutionary'-ey mouths seem to get away with all sorts of logical crimes and unimpeachabley general proclamations. A lot of them are basically posers and pseuds. As the excitement and breathlessness and novelty start to wear off, we should be applying a little more intellectual rigour to the output of these people.

There was an amusing frontpage HN story a couple of weeks ago which was a refreshing voice to see in a forum like this:

http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/105703/th...

Note: I'm not saying it's all guff, just saying we should apply the same critical process to this material as with anything else.

hkmurakami3• 14 years ago

Now that you mention it, Malcolm Gladwell comes to mind as well.

prbuckley• 14 years ago

"Google just announced that it will produce its highly-acclaimed Nexus 7 tablet in the United States. " wow! I didn't know Google was doing this. The fact that they can sell that tablet at such a competitive price and make it in the USA is saying a lot.

justanotheratom• 14 years ago

I could not find any references about Google's announcement to produce Nexus 7 in US. On the other hand, Nexus Q is indeed manufactured in the US. Is it possible that this is a typo on the part of the author?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/technology/google-and-othe...

NoPiece• 14 years ago

Another Times article has some more info on the Q (it is being made somewhere in San Jose), but the exact location is being kept secret. Would it be surprising if they outsourced the 7 to the same manufacturer?

"Google uses a contract manufacturer to make the Q. Last week it was being assembled in a large factory 15 minutes from Google headquarters. The company declined to say how many people were employed at the plant, which can run as many as three shifts each day. However, during a brief tour, made with the understanding that the exact location would not be disclosed, it was clear that hundreds of workers were involved in making the Q."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/technology/google-and-othe...

hkmurakami3• 14 years ago

I don't understand how this would be possible. Nexus 7 is a device that is made in collaboration with ASUS. ASUS being a Taiwanese company, doesn't have any manufacturing capacity in the United States.

ASUS licensing out the HW design to Google and Google contracting with a US factory for production? Doesn't sound logical to me.

oemera• 14 years ago

I think Googles plans to manufactor in the USA died with the Nexus Q. No one will buy something which is three times more expensive than competitiv products. In addition no one did care about the Nexus Q being made in the USA after seeing that price (300$).

ef4• 14 years ago

Manufacturing never left. The US outputs a greater total value of manufactured goods today than at any point in history.

China's manufacturing sector is only 3% bigger than the US.

What disappeared were the unskilled jobs, and they are never coming back, because they are rapidly becoming obsolete.

Once upon a time almost everyone worked in agriculture. Now it's about 3%, and that 3% produces more food than ever. Expect the same thing to happen to manufacturing.

cageface• 14 years ago

The implication here is that the kind of manufacturing work that helped lift China out of poverty may never migrate to the rest of the world's developing nations.

It may turn out that the time window in which a developing country could ride the outsourcing train to prosperity was actually only a few decades wide.

thenomad• 14 years ago

Manufacturing isn't the only outsourcable work, though. Customer service, programming, and other things less easily replicated by 3D printing and robots will still be outsourced for a while yet.

gadders• 14 years ago

Ha. I saw the headline and quickly clicked through to post essentially what you have just said.

How many people do a thing should never be a measure, unless you don't care about inefficiency.

hristov• 14 years ago

Then where do I buy an american made cell phone or television set?

adestefan• 14 years ago

A number if the parts in your cell phone and TV are manufactured in the US. It's the final assembly that happens overseas.

nathan_long• 14 years ago

>> What disappeared were the unskilled jobs, and they are never coming back, because they are rapidly becoming obsolete.

This. To get a job, the new requirement is to be able to do something that a robot can't do. And robots are improving rapidly.

Just like steam shovels put ditch diggers out of work, and spreadsheets put human calculators out of work, robots are putting factory workers out of work. As their dexterity and visual abilities improve, and their cost decreases, they'll start taking over other jobs: picking crops, washing dishes and cars, laying bricks, etc.

The big question, for which I don't have an answer, is whose problem it is when workers' skills become obsolete.

waveman2• 14 years ago

You need to look carefully at the definition of manufacturing before you get too excited.

For example, did you know the staff at MacDonald's "manufactures" burgers?

As a reality check, how many people do you know who work in manufacturing?

BTW the only reason manufacturing is coming back is because the jobs are completely disappearing from it due to robotics and automation. From wikipedia "Employment in manufacturing ... its lowest since July 1950".

fdr• 14 years ago

A more detailed set of articles about this are in a large spread from The Economist a little while back:

http://www.economist.com/node/21552901

Considering the boldness of the economic claims, it fills in a little more background and necessary information to make this claim believable.

Manufacturing is returning to America

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