Is Manufacturing Dead in America?
August 30, 2012
I thought that this was an interesting show about the state of manufacturing in America today called “Made in the USA” on PBS’s America Revealed hosted by Yul Kwon originally aired May 2, 2012. Here’s a description from their website:
“American manufacturing has undergone a massive revolution over the past 20 years. Despite all the gloom and doom, America is actually the number one manufacturing nation on earth. Yul Kwon crosses the nation looking at traditional and not-so traditional types of manufacturing. “
Some of the things that I think were noteworthy included:
| Topic |
Approximate Start Time |
| Car manufacturing in the US |
8:15 |
| Efficiency |
10:18 |
| Old movie of the Ford Model T |
11:04 |
| American Manufacturing |
12:42 |
| Production Value |
13:15 |
| Lean simulation training at the US VW plant |
14:03 |
| Lean manufacturing |
18:47 |
| USA is still #1 |
37:31 |
If you think manufacturing is dead in the USA, you might want to look again. It definitely doesn’t look like our father’s factories, but again they probably said that about their father’s factories. If you are a manufacturer and you do not think this applies to you see how they applied Lean concepts in a shipyard (didn’t Shigeo Shingo do that over 50 years ago?) and a steel mill. It is also worth pointing out that many of the high value-added jobs are still here. I’m not saying that everything is glorious in US Manufacturing, but it might not be as bleak as people make it out to be. Let’s get back to making stuff that matters.
http://video.pbs.org/video/2227791872
Watch Made In The USA on PBS. See more from America Revealed.
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