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Manufacturing in the 21st Century—A Time for Innovation
2007-11-04
Speech given at 1999 Trade and Transportation Conference by
Ned Ellington
Director, Manufacturing Systems & Technologies
National Institute of Standards & Technology
Manufacturing is a change in landscape. We can easily count how many we have because we have old rules on what is a manufacturer and what's not a manufacturer. The Census Bureau does that. But it's changing dramatically. For example, we were talking just a few minutes ago, a software manufacturer, somebody producing software, he's a manufacturer, and we would say yes. We're very liberal in our definition. Food processing, is that manufacturing? To us it is. It's manufacturing. It's converting something -- products, services, raw materials -- into something that has a higher value. And that's as simple a definition as I'd like to stick with in manufacturing.
Many of our manufacturing firms are calling themselves service firms because they're basically providing services to other manufacturers. I spent some time recently with John Deere, and many of you are familiar with John Deere. And (inaudible), they're providing services to John Deere and other large OEMs. And we would traditionally call that manufacturing, and they're looking at it a different way. And I think that message will bear out a little bit in some of my comments.
The second definition I'd like to clear up is technology. A lot of us when we say technology -- and particularly, you know, I'm from someplace like the National Institute of Standards and Technology, you know, we think of hard technology -- computers, bits, bytes, things like that. We've defined technology in our program as how we accomplish work because we talk about hard technology, software technologies. And the reason I want to clear these two definitions up is I want you, as Jerry said, think about where we're going and don't be held to the past and don't be held by the language of technology just as computers.
The hottest technology in manufacturing today in two sectors -- automobile and aerospace -- is something called lean manufacturing. It's not diet. It's not low fat. It's leaning out our production processes, and it's all driven by reducing waste. Now we consider that a technology. But you don't buy it in a package, and you don't plug it into the wall. So those are a couple of definitional things I think would help over the next few minutes.
