I would like you smart engineers to post your view and solution on how we can get our design and manufacturing back to USA and continue to pride of an Engineering Nation.

 

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tombrown -- One key ingredient in making the U.S. competitive again is to scrap our ridiculously complex tax system in favor of the FairTax. If you don't know about the FT, you owe it to yourself to go to www.fairtax.org to find out.

Among the research findings related to the FT, 500 foreign companies were asked what they would do if a system like the FT were in place in the U.S. 80% of them said they would open facilities here. The other 20% said they would move here!

We can save American Manufacturing, but we need to have the support of the United States Congress.  I work in the incandescent lamp manufacturing industry, which GE and Sylvania provide thousands of direct American manufacturing jobs (and probably ten thousand plus trickle down jobs).  Recently congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (HR6) mostly driven by Al Gore's top ten ways to save the planet -- #7 was ban the incadescent light bulb.  The big problem here is that the only viable replacement product is the compact fluorescent lamp (CFL), which none are produced in North America and most are produced in China.  We all know China's record on environmental and health issues to add insult to injury.  So first of all, Congress can not legislate any more American-made products into obsolescense.  Second they need to level the playing field for American Manufacturers, so that free trade is fair trade.  The following areas need congress' immediate attention.  1.  The unfair system that keeps the Chinese monetary currency at a disadvantage to us and a huge trade advantage to them.  2.  Envirnmental regulations need to be fair. After all China is not a 3rd world country, they have a space program and nuclear weapons.  They can protect the earth just like us.  This protection costs the American manufacturer, but obviously not the Chinese manufacturer.  3.  The health and safety regulations needs to be consistent.  For example, my employer will spend over $75,000 to implement the new Arc Flash standard (NFPA 70E).  What will Chinese manufacturers spend?  4.  Finally, state subsidy by the Chinese goverment and China's disregard for intellectual property and copyrights is a huge disadvantage for American manufacturers. 

All the automation in the world can not overcome the current advantages that are hugely in favor of China. Congress must act swiftly and appropriately!!!

 DW from Pennsylvania

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We cannot get the kind of manufacturting that has been outsourced back.  These jobs can be performed by many people in this world.  The Chinese are not any different from us except that their cost of living can support low cost manufacturing.  The key to ensuring the success of the Americam manufacturing economy is in high tech areas, research and development of new systems and  products.  Government can elp by insuring that educartion standards here are the best in the world, by focusing on math and science and moving away from their standardized testing one hat fits all approach. Parents need to be involved in their chidrens education by being involved and putting forth the effort to understand the concepts chidren bring home.  Asia is graduating more engineers and scientists than we are.  The future belongs to new technology and if we as a nation cannot keep up then we will fall behind.  We have been living on a high horse for half a century and we must realize that everyone else wants the same things.  Wealth is relative, if the rest of the world catches up we cannot blame them or the corporations.  Buisiness is for profit, that is the motivation, and if they can go somewhere else and get the same thig for a lower price than they will.  As a comparison,  many people shop at Walmart because of their low prices, many of those things are made in asia,  while we complane about outsouceing we also suport it by buying those products.  We as consumers are no different than the corporations.  One cannot have it both ways. 

We will never get back from China, our lost manufacturing abilities. As long as there is a cost differential between goods produced overseas and here at home, the public will more likely go with the less costly item. This is assuming the quality is pretty much the same. We don't have a monopoly on brains here. Other countries are capable of designing and engineering products as well as us, sometimes better. Chinese are very nationalistic. They will work mainly for the good of the country, while we work for our own personal good. In other words, others are willingto make sacrifices where-as we want it all now.

My name is John McGettrick of McGettrick Engineering I have been an engineering consultant for 20 years now, my specialty is designing and developing new products made of plastic. You ask how we can get our design and manufacturing back to USA? The first thing we need to do is educate the leaders of our companies, they all assume that the only way you can compete today is to make everything in China, that is totally wrong. Any products that are made by machines, ie. injection molded, stamped, machined buy automated machinery can be made here in the USA as cheap as in China as long as it is designed correctly, so there is not much labor involved. If the engineers do their job up front and design the products to be easily assembled then it is not worth sending to China.

It is like everything in the USA, people jump in on the new trends, without ever analyzing if it is cost effective for their products. Many of the leaders of our companies have no technical background and instead of asking questions of those of us that do, they make decisions based on what they read in magazines or see on TV. If these leaders know of all of the problems, we have in dealing with the companies in China, they would work hard to not send their products over there. Just the fact that the steal everything we send over there should be enough to stop most companies, you get tooling made in China that should product 1,000,000 parts per year but they can only get you 400,000 and you wonder why, until you find your product being sold all over the world by a company from China. If you go in to try and get them shut down, a few weeks later another shop is making the same product in a different location.

I cannot feel sorry for the USA though, we are doing it to ourselves, we value money more than everything else. It isn't over yet, we have some of the most crative people on Earth here in the USA, we just need to wake up to what is important and get this country back on track or we will really have something to complain about when all the other countries pass us up so we are no longer a super power.

mcget@cox.net

your view is side very much.

usa is still a big manufacture country in the world which has high tech manufacture, but china or some asia countries only have low level manufacture. if you hope to take this job back to usa, you hve to reduce your workers salary, as low as that in china or asia contries.

 

I have been an engineering consultant for 25 years & I am not the least bit surprised at the exit to China syndrome.. The one thing that I have seen is the inability of many manufacturing companies to actually see what they are doing, note that I didn't say "look" at what they are doing, but see what they are doing. I have heard reasons for the use of some types of manufacturing techniques that defy an educated response. If many of the people that are complaining about the lower cost Chinese production would take the time to look at their manufacturing techniques, and then actually do some thing about them the Chinese would be looking for work. A view from 10,000 feet instead of looking at the design of every little fillet & radius would serve the U.S. manufacturers well. At some point though there has to be a willingness to actually do things differently, which can be very difficult...............It"s just "easier" to pack it up a& ship it to China.