[HN Gopher] America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to ... ___________________________________________________________________ America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it Author : mjn Score : 13 points Date : 2023-09-16 21:32 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (americanaffairsjournal.org) (TXT) w3m dump (americanaffairsjournal.org) | peepeepoopoo36 wrote: | [flagged] | mensetmanusman wrote: | I work in one of the last remaining large industrial | manufacturing labs in the US. Some of my colleagues worked at | Bell before that was shuttered. | | My sense from talking to the previous generation is that | financialization of the US has started (finally) failing the | American people. | | The previous generation cashed in on major profits by off shoring | (Kodak), but we overdid it. | | In a round about way our company is run by pension funds, and I | work on projects that would get 8-9 figure investments if we were | doing this in APEC, but we would rather have stock buybacks, so | we end up getting 6 figures and puttering along. | | Meanwhile the higher ups wonder 'what happened to R&D?!' | version_five wrote: | I work on projects that would get 8-9 figure investments if we | were doing this in APEC | | Are the apac equivalents of those projects generating returns | commensurate with the extra investment? Or is it a strategic | choice that they typically focus more on advanced manufacturing | while the US focuses more on software? I'm just wondering what | the right way to think about this is. | lemonwaterlime wrote: | The key topics missing from this article are management and | culture. Manufacturing companies by and large are stubborn with | outdated practices that haven't kept up with the times. The | number of mechanical engineers who switched to web development, | for instance, because of poor pay and improper management is | insane. And during the pandemic, even more either fled or were | pushed out from lack of opportunity. It's easy to blame these | policies and say that industries aren't connected, but when these | firms are refusing to embrace new technologies and take | calculated risks, they do this to themselves all by themselves. | | They commonly keep employees using the simplest heuristics that | someone at some point in the past developed which worked then, so | why break it? And they push this mediocrity throughout the entire | organization and industry. Then they swap out one failed CEO for | the same person with a different name like a pair of gloves, | wondering what ever happened as there was nothing more that could | be done. Meanwhile their ageist management policies block out the | insights of the young, all but ensuring that no new ideas are | brought into the mix--all until it's time for another bailout. | mdorazio wrote: | Here are the key points the article suggests (it spends quite a | long time explaining how we got here): | | 1) Improve the [government sponsored] Manufacturing Institutes | | 2) [federally] Back R&D for manufacturing technologies | | 3) Provide scale-up financing [by the government] | | 4) Use government procurement power to promote new manufacturing | technologies | | 5) Direct production support [to sectors deemed critical] | | 6) Provide both "top-down" [gov picks a tech and supports | development of it] and "bottom-up" [broad incentives like IRA] | support | | 7) Build a manufacturing focus into existing industrial policy | programs | | 8) Map and fill gaps in supply chains | | 9) Fix workforce education [by refocusing on legitimate | vocational tracks] | | 10) Put someone in charge [of coordinating agencies, budgets, and | efforts] | | This is all effectively trying to copy large segments of the | China playbook, but in my opinion it misses some rather important | points. Namely, protectionism and implicit incentives. On the | first point, you can't really compete with China when it is | actively hostile to foreign companies and de facto encourages | outright theft of knowledge and expertise in exchange for access | to its market. As long as we have a significant portion of people | yelling about "trade wars don't solve anything" any time someone | proposes leveling the playing field, competition is a nonstarter. | | On the second point, the elephant in the room is that smart | people in the US can make 2-3X as much in software or finance as | they can in manufacturing, so what do you think they're going to | pick? Which company is private investment going to fund - the | SaaS co. with 40% margins and rapid growth or the manufacturing | co. scraping 10% margins and 5% CAGR? It's hard to see where the | skilled labor and private investment side of the equation is | supposed to come from when the incentives are so mismatched - you | almost have to find a way to decrease incentives in the currently | lucrative pools first. | mschuster91 wrote: | > On the second point, the elephant in the room is that smart | people in the US can make 2-3X as much in software or finance | as they can in manufacturing, so what do you think they're | going to pick? | | Make unions stronger and kill off all of Wall Street finance | shenanigans that's purely devoted to creating money out of thin | air or skimming (especially HFT). That house of cards is going | to crash hard anyway, so best tear it down in a controlled | fashion than risk _yet another_ 2008-style uncontrolled | implosion. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-09-16 23:00 UTC)