Infrastructure Investments Mean Manufacturing Advancements
 Since
the beginning of the economic crisis, there have been calls
for infrastructure investments in order to stimulate the
economy.
Ideally, based on a Keynsian model, investing in building
projects not only will provide jobs from the ground up, but
also leave us with better roads, bridges, and schools as a
side-effect. Keep in mind, though, that equipment is required
to build those roads, bridges, and schools, and companies that
can provide the cheapest, most innovative, most efficient
equipment will get the bulk of the available capital coming
from government funds.
This means that it behooves manufacturing companies to
move from traditional techniques to what the White House
National Science and Technology Council calls Next Generation
Manufacturing (NGM), which is flexible enough that it can
respond to and even anticipate local needs almost immediately.
What manufacturers have discovered is that productivity
improvements and lower product and process costs are not
enough to succeed any more in this economy. There is only so
much that can be cut before the product becomes unusable and
potentially dangerous.
That's why NGM is so important and why companies
should be taking this opportunity to examine the way in which
they've designed their own infrastructure so that they can
take advantage of the opportunities that national
infrastructure investments present.
And with national infrastructure investments can come an
organized plan by which manufacturers can make the most of the
chances presented to them. The smartest thing that they can do
is to focus their efforts on six main areas that are going to
be vital to competition in the next decade: advanced
manufacturing systems, advanced enterprise concepts,
engineering tools, workforce issues, manufacturing processes
and equipment, and business practices. By keeping focus on
these areas, companies will be able to move into a more
malleable model of how manufacturing is accomplished and
rather than huge dedicated factories designed for a single
purpose and unable to adapt to changes in markets or
technologies.
This focus is especially important as it will allow
companies to make the most of government R&D efforts that
have centered around developing agile or flexible
manufacturing, rapid prototyping, and intelligent controls and
sensors. All of these are important to developing new, better
products quicker and with less room for human error. The first
is especially important so that companies are not wasting time
and effort lobbying against technological advancements in
order to avoid the costs of altering internal infrastructure
and potentially having to lay off workers.
The time to invest in the future of manufacturing is
now.
In order to make the most of the economic recovery and
contribute to the overall economic health of major trading
centers the world over, manufacturing companies need to use
national infrastructure investments to invest in their own
infrastructure and look to the future as they do.
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