By Mark Devlin, IEN Staff
Economically, things aren’t looking good. U.S. household debt has almost doubled in the past seven years; $14.4 trillion for households, combined. U.S. federal debt is now running at nearly $9.5 trillion. (See the U.S. National Debt Clock in References.) According to Charles McMillion, President and Chief Economist of MBG Information Services in Washington, DC, the U.S. has also experienced one of the weakest periods of Gross Domestic Product growth since the Great Depression: less than 6 million new jobs and a mere $4 trillion increase in GDP. Add to or consider with all of that the mortgage crisis and war spending that’s cost the U.S. $406.2 billion through December of 2007. According to Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist and Columbia University Professor, and Linda J. Blimes, a former CFO at the Commerce Department who now teaches at Harvard, both say they predicted the war spending-related economic fallout that we’re now experiencing, and that this would result in the largest economic downturn since the Depression.
Where is manufacturing in all of this? At its peak in 1979, 19.4 million jobs existed in manufacturing. That figure dropped to 14 million in 2003, according to a document from the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (which includes Georgia Tech, NIST, and SRI International), called Advanced Technology and the Future of Manufacturing (that document is referenced often in this article).
Is it all really that bleak? No. While millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost, U.S. manufacturing output has actually increased. Real output per manufacturing hours worked was more than four times greater in the year 2000 that it was in 1950. Things twist again, however, as manufacturing’s share of GDP—due to expansion in the service sectors—has consistently declined for about 30% in 1950 to 15% in 2000.
So, no matter which way it’s cut, things aren’t looking good.
The above-referenced MEP report very well, albeit generally, describes what the future could bring for U.S. manufacturing. “As we reflect on such current trends and seek to think forward, it seems that the future of manufacturing in the United States will hinge increasingly on capabilities to develop, deploy, and commercialize new products, processes, organization structures, human skills, and management practices. And all of this in the context of increasingly capable international competition and globalization of trade and technology.”
Rapid Prototyping
The next, successful wave of manufacturing has already begun. It began back in the late ‘80s, in fact: rapid prototyping, or "additive manufacturing" (AM) in which materials are added and processed during manufacture, instead of being cut, ground, or milled away as is done in machining, for instance.
Making a cool, plastic part with RP, however, has its limitations. You can touch it, hold it, examine it—but, until very recently, RP’d parts have not been functional. Dr. Kevin Creehan, who at the time of this writing is a Research Assistant Professor specializing in manufacturing at Virginia Tech, says that the move to making a functional, usable prototype will also involve a move to small, desktop manufacturing. While Creehan legitimately foresees that equipment as being akin to miniature versions, in effect, of today’s CNC equipment, others have a different view and are using RP to make functional parts, though today on a very limited basis. A Boeing spin-off, ODM (for On-Demand Manufacturing) has already RP’d actual, usable ducting for F-18 fighters. In one instance, “...an assembly of 10 parts was replaced by a single SLS part. An entire assembly line was eliminated.”
As RP technology advances, a couple of things happen. Firstly, compared to injection molding or machining, part complexity no longer matters as “SLA and SLS processes can reach any point in a part’s cross section and process material there.” Also, there’s no hard tooling involved, and the need for fasteners is reduced. As already demonstrated in medical device manufacturing—which often uses machining processes to produce, for example, replacement skeletal joints—traditional processes usually require expensive (often by-hand) post-processing and finishing work. The next, important leap in RP will produce a part—even a complex part—that’s ready to go.
Secondly, and even more importantly, advances in RP (more accurately called Functional Prototyping, to coin a term) will lead to a whole new world of manufacturing—to levels of part customization never before seen in manufacturing. Bigger picture, that’s also where the future of manufacturing in the U.S. comes into play. There’s no end in sight for off-shoring. However, as Creehan asks, “Is it better to build a million parts for a penny each, or to build one item that’s worth a million dollars?” He believes the U.S. is poised to assume the latter position—producing specialized parts and components in the U.S. that simply cannot be produced anywhere else—in concert with off-shoring for less expensive items.
MEP also predicts that AM equipment will also become elements in home technology so that, for example, custom-designed fixtures could actually be manufactured at home. Trips to the local Home Depot or Lowes, then, would become primarily for AM supplies, larger items, lumber, and landscaping. We’re already five years into that 10-year prediction, however, so restart that clock from today.
Continue to Part 3: IEN 75th Predictions—Wireless...
REFERENCES
ADDITIONAL READING
A Sampler of Cutting Edge Engineering Research
Princeton University
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Replacing Wire With Laser, Sun Tries to Speed Up Data
New York Times, March 24, 2008
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Special Reports: 10 Emerging Technologies 2008
MIT Technology Review
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Forecasts For the Next 25 Years
World Future Society
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Top 10 Scientific Breakthroughs of 2007
Wired, December 27, 2007
Learn more...
