#manufacturing ecosystem

[themachinemaker]

Government and Industries should work together then & then manufacturers in India can be competitive in both national and international market. Firstly, would like to put forth some of the examples on the subject of why Government before bring any new policy/ law and implement it, should make sure the tier 1 and 2 levels of the local manufacturing ecosystem are ready with the changing policies.

In 2000, we were planning to reform the Electricity act, and finally, somewhere in 2003 it got approved and the government announced its implementation. But even with the time we had around three years, there was no available supplier base ready to cater to the demand. Even there were manufacturers available in the country, but they failed to be part of the implementation on a larger role. Finally, the required products were sourced from countries out of India, which reduced possible investments to the country. Local manufacturing activities failed which should have happened in the initial phase.

Read full story here: https://www.themachinemaker.com/market/deepak-shinde-080521

[manufacturingspace]

Architectural Manufacturing in SoCal

http://archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=5908

Really interesting article on the advancement of manufacturing, particularly with regard to architectural products, in Southern California:

"The facility has numerous advantages over the company’s other factory in the Philippines: it allows the outfit to produce large products that just can’t fit in shipping crates; it produces custom fixtures that the company can’t engineer effectively overseas; it allows for production and delivery in a matter of days, not weeks or months; and it creates the highest-quality components of all of its operations."

...

"A 2011 study by Boston Consultant Group shows that investment in U.S. manufacturing is beginning to accelerate as the country becomes one of the cheapest locations for manufacturing in the developed world.

And while there has been a steep drop-off in manufacturing in the past two decades, the U.S. is still the largest manufacturing economy in the world, making up 21 percent of all globally manufactured products."

As discussed here, regarding what has powered China's success in winning Apple manufacturing contracts, the cost of labor and production is less of an issue than the density of the factory network. This story seems to support the argument that cost of manufacturing in the USA, for many types of industries and products, is very competitive with that done in Asian countries. It also suggests that reindustrialization efforts in the USA might initially want to focus explicitly on products which have less of a dependence on far-away factories in whatever supply chain they are a part of, or are more capable of mitigating those affects (hopefully instigating the eventual formation of a similar network here). The iPhone doesn't seem to be a good candidate, but high-tech architectural cladding and fenestration are.

Also important - these things are much heavier (relative to their cost) than iPhones and computers. Matter matters - the manufacturing of products like this loses responsiveness to a market relative to distance at a much greater rate than small, expensive things which can be flown.

So, tentatively, an ideal product for manufacturing in the US might:

1) be heavy;

2) not  require a supply chain terribly reliant on a massive network of offshore manufacturing for components;

3) require exacting tolerances;

4) have a manufacturing process which can be automated;

5) require frequent mass customization of individual element;

6) require a fast turnaround time;

7) require close collaboration between design and manufacturing teams.

(Which sounds an awful lot like the products being described in the article.)

[manufacturingspace]

iPhone manufacturing

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?pagewanted=all

"Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhonemanufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”"

One of the things that interested me from this iPhone article in the NYT was that it identified the networked manufacturing ecosystem of Asia as the key advantage that region has over the United States in winning iPhone (and presumable other high tech) manufacturing work. In the same way that the density of cities is an advantage for white collar and creative jobs, the geographical density of manufacturing facilities which have become interdependent due to the sophistication and complexity of modern supply chain logistics has become an issue which is more important than simply the cost of labor in powering manufacturing in this region.