bad news for US manufacturing

[www.forbes.com]


Amazon couldn’t make a Kindle here if it wanted to

Decades of outsourcing manufacturing have left U.S. industry without the means to invent the next generation of high-tech products that are key to rebuilding its economy, as noted by Gary Pisano and Willy Shih in a classic article, “Restoring American Competitiveness” (Harvard Business Review, July-August 2009)

The U.S. has lost or is on the verge of losing its ability to develop and manufacture a slew of high-tech products. Amazon’s Kindle 2 couldn’t be made in the U.S., even if Amazon wanted to:

Lower tech manufacturing is hurting as well. I know, I'm in it!

It happend with cars and it took a long time to turn that around. We are strong and we will find a way to move forward...when I don't know but we have to and we will.

LowBoy

TAKE A LITTLE TIME KICKBACK AND WATCH SOME OF MY DETECTING VIDEO'S BELOW ON YouTube

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If you don’t dig it, then how are you going to know what you’re missing!
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I wish but am convinced now more than ever that a larger percentage of the population has a disconnection with reality.

Steve(MS) Wrote


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> I wish but am convinced now more than ever that a
> larger percentage of the population has a
> disconnection with reality.

I have to agree with you on that one!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/09/2012 11:28AM by tracyjm.

Here's some pertinent text from your Forbes link. It appears that Kindle can't, or is unable to do what Apple does every few years. And Apple is an American company. Bottom line: blame Management, not the "American way". Of course, a change in the U.S. tax structure and formula for capital gains (you know, government meddling) would help keep jobs here too...

The U.S. has lost or is on the verge of losing its ability to develop and manufacture a slew of high-tech products. Amazon’s Kindle 2 couldn’t be made in the U.S., even if Amazon wanted to:

- The flex circuit connectors are made in China because the US supplier base migrated to Asia.
- The electrophoretic display is made in Taiwan because the expertise developed from producting flat-panel LCDs migrated to Asia with semiconductor manufacturing.
- The highly polished injection-molded case is made in China because the U.S. supplier base eroded as the manufacture of toys, consumer electronics and computers migrated to China.
- The wireless card is made in South Korea because that country became a center for making mobile phone components and handsets.
- The controller board is made in China because U.S. companies long ago transferred manufacture of printed circuit boards to Asia.
- The Lithium polymer battery is made in China because battery development and manufacturing migrated to China along with the development and manufacture of consumer electronics and notebook computers.

An exception is Apple [AAPL], which “has been able to preserve a first-rate design capability in the States so far by remaining deeply involved in the selection of components, in industrial design, in software development, and in the articulation of the concept of its products and how they address users’ needs.”
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Dealing with the root cause of these problems:
As noted earlier in the series, the root cause of these phenomena is the traditional-management pursuit of short-term profits. The lemming-like rush towards the cliff will continue so long as management is living within the mental prison of 20th Century management. The true bottom line of a 21st Century firm lies not in its ability to generate short-term profits, but rather in its ability to delight its customers through continuous innovation. Once the firm focuses on continuous innovation, it finds that it no longer makes sense to outsource major functions 12,000 miles away for short-term gain. Happily, once the firm achieves true customer delight, it finds that it makes more money than if it focused on short-term gain.

What is needed thus is radical management that has continuous innovation built into its DNA, with a different goal (delighting the customer), a different role for managers (enabling teams), a different of coordinating work (dynamic linking) and different values (continuous improvement and radical transparency) and different communications (horizontal conversations). A single fix is not enough: we need systemic change.

Fortunately we now know what’s involved in the kind of radical management that fosters continuous innovation at firms like Apple [AAPL], Amazon [AMZN] and Salesforce [CRM] and Intuit [INTU], just as we now know why traditional management is failing at famous old firms like Wal-Mart [WMT] or GE [GE]. Knowing how to manage in the 21st Century is not a question of finding out how. We know what to do. It’s an issue of getting on with doing it. It means setting aside 20th Century management thinking and moving into the future.