Tue, 08/12/2014 - 09:37
‘There is most likely some interplay between the weak capital spending numbers and the weak job market of the last few years; there is less incentive to spend money on productivity-enhancing equipment when labor is cheap.” This recent musing by…
Tue, 06/10/2014 - 16:25
In college I learned about chaos theory, sometimes called the butterfly effect, in which small differences in an initial condition result in divergent outcomes in dynamic systems. In layman’s terms, my fellow students and I were fond of saying that…
Mon, 09/23/2013 - 16:35
England, during the 1760s, was the birthplace of the western world’s Industrial Revolution, initiated by a group of men who made “manufacturing” the purview of the inventive. Called The Lunar Society of Birmingham because the group met during the…
Wed, 09/04/2013 - 12:24
In March 2013, a Manufacturing Leadership Council survey was conducted by Frost & Sullivan with 226 manufacturers. The survey’s intent was to understand manufacturers’ current workforce strategies, ask about future strategies, and observe key…
Tue, 07/16/2013 - 10:19
Approximately half of the 704 employers participating in a survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education and American Public Media’s Marketplace said they have trouble finding qualified college graduates to fill their companies’ positions. Yet, 68…
Tue, 06/11/2013 - 16:55
The idea of the garage as an incubator for startup businesses is as American as hot dogs, baseball, and apple pie (although I like apple cobbler better). From Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniack, Dave Hewlett, and Bill Packard to your next…
Thu, 05/09/2013 - 11:04
There’s nothing I love as much as a paradox. So there’s a lot for me to get excited about with America’s current manufacturing paradox, which is whether U.S. manufacturing is the next big thing or a dying dinosaur. Should we steer our children from…