Managing Automation - August 2008 - (Page 24)

MANUFACTURING COUNCIL Q&A and we will figure out a way to compete. But things are stacked against us. When you look at China, it’s the only place in the world that [the petroleum industr y] actually lost money. How do you lose money in this market in petroleum? It’s because the government is artificially keepEric Mittelstadt ing prices low so that their goods and services will be on a more competitive playing field. I think that our government has to take an active role in trying to level that playing field for us. We don’t want to see things like the machine tool industry leaving us. I was reading an article recently where Richard there is a large windmill manufacSade turer that wanted to come to the U.S. and did not find the machine tool manufacturing required to build his products in the U.S., so he relocated to another country in Europe. really don’t want to do engineering. They want to do law, medicine, and business in a general sense. We have to take people from overseas. I have to give research funding to non-Americans because we can’t find Americans that are qualified to do it. For the last several decades we’ve been pretty lucky. When a student came here from another countr y, like India or China, they stayed here and actually resided here, raised their kids, etc. The trend is now reversing. They’re going back. Now we’ve got a problem. How do we [incent] Americans to get more into engineering? NICKEL: We have a fundamental problem in the secondary education system. I have a son who’s a college professor and teaches electrical engineering. As he said, when he looks out at his class, 75% of them are immigrants into this country for education purposes only. The problem is that we don’t have people coming out of the secondar y education system who are prepared to embark on an engineering career right now. That’s a fundamental [flaw] that the government can take an active role in — if not federal, at least at the state and local levels. It’s not working as well as it needs to be. SADE: What it comes down to is that we as manufacturers need to get in their faces and show [students] the excitement about manufacturing that we had when we came out of college 30 years ago. That’s just what we’re not seeing coming out of college. I had a kid with a master’s degree out of Purdue say to me, “I don’t want to fight the commodities problem and the oil problem that there is today. I think I’m going to go into consulting.” Where’s the passion of going in and being that engineer, developing and pulling a product through, and getting it out there and being the innovator? We have to get back to the basics. Q: Can the government really do anything about that, the migration of machine tooling and other industries out of the United States? MITTELSTADT: When you sor t through all these things, it gets back to the point that productivity is the answer. Part of it is getting the right kind of competitive workforce, which is a different workforce today. It’s back to the point that you’ve got to make some investment. You’ve got to have incentives for investment, and that investment might be a people investment, an education investment, a [hard tooling] investment, or an investment in R&D of some kind. You’ve got to spur investment energy and enable the capital flow of investment activity in some fundamental way. That’s missing right now. LAPIDE: My concern is this: If we want to keep a decent-sized manufacturing base here, we have to have an innovation engine. Here’s what we’re finding in the universities. We live in an affluent society. The kids Q: Does the next administration need to perhaps create a U.S. manufacturing policy that addresses these issues? Is that even possible? Is that desirable? HEATH: Possible, but I fall into the category that frankly [believes] the less involvement the government is going to have in my business, the happier I’m going to be. Every time we ask the government to get involved and Larry Lapide ma 24 2008 August

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Managing Automation - August 2008

Managing Automation - August 2008 Contents Take 1 After 18 Months, the Oracle/SAP Suit Has Little Effect on Maintenance Sales At 100, Foxboro Reinvents Around Its Customers New Private Equity Firm Eyes Software A Software Suite Just for Manufacturers i2 Chief Focuses on Services Plan Notes It's Time for Action Examining U.S. Competitveness Leveling the Field An Unhealthy Situation Exploring Alternatives Math and Science: Key to the Future Product Scan Advertiser Index Next

Managing Automation - August 2008

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