FEBRUARY 20238MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY INSIGHTSIN MY OPINIONI have seen manufacturing in America since 1980, about 40 years. It was a great transition time when other World War II-affected economies began to reassert themselves, of course with the help of American experts and resources, but still with their work ethics, national competencies, motivations, and growing economy in the USA.Post World War era started to shape in the 1950s. American superiority in manufacturing in World War was pushed into the 50s, driven through the 60s, and started to stumble in the 70s. There was a time when anything Made in the USA was considered the best in the free world. Our Cars were giants, bigger cars were considered the better, car repairs or services were common, and auto-mechanics were in demand. In the 1960s and 70s, manufacturing was accelerated through innovations, especially in the electronics industry.In the early eighties, Semiconductors were a growing industry. Motorola, MOSFET, Texas Instruments, Intel, AMD, a new entrant, and Fairchild were key corporations. It was the infancy of the large-scale integration (LSI) chips industry. I worked as a designated engineer to support production yields of 1K, 4K, and 16K memory chips. Later joined the newly created quality function. Our wafer yields were about 50%, we had yield losses due to inconsistency in manufacturing. After trying to improve for three years, we gave up and decided to pursue new designs (64K) and transfer our manufacturing of older chips to our sister plant in Japan. I, being the newer kid on the block, was asked to support the transfer for yields. I still remember vividly that our yields kept going up at the 450-angle trend until they crossed the mid-90s%. At that time, there was a perception of Japan dumping chips in the US at half the price, but I just learned that their yields were probably twice as good then. How was it all achieved? There was no secret, no shortcut was taken, and thorough experiments and analyses were conducted to drive improvement. Looking back, we were more interested in doing exciting work on new designs, while old designs never achieved success or their designed performance in manufacturing. That was the beginning of outsourcing, first within multinationals followed by outsourcing to suppliers for poor quality and the lower cost of labor. That grew in scope and eventually led to global supply chains without realizing that sometimes the total cost of items outsourced is higher than the local cost. Customer responsiveness, disruptions, and recent logistics costs have unsettled the global supply chains. In addition, diminishing experience and knowledge in manufacturing started to reflect in limitations of and innovations in designs. Demand for restoring or bringing manufacturing back to has been growing for many years.Recent manufacturing studies show that U.S. manufacturing is still #2 in the world after that of China. Our leading industries are Gas and Petroleum products, Light Trucks, and Pharmaceuticals. Top industries shooting for reshoring include Transportation Equipment, Computer Electronics Production, and Electrical Appliances and Components. It is hard to understand what is being brought back for reshoring. Irrespective of what we will be manufacturing we must remember what led us to outsource. The most important cause was our inability to produce high-quality products. We must accept it and challenge ourselves to take the necessary steps to make the "Made in the USA' the best in the world again. In the 2000s, I was inspired to write books on topics that would add value to a business. Being a Quality professional, one of the questions that I wanted to answer was why American manufacturing suffered. As I started to think about it, I realized that the poor-quality phenomenon was not limited to a specific industry. It was prevalent across all industries By Praveen Gupta, Director of Quality, Stephen GouldREGAINING THE MANUFACTURING LEADERSHIPPraveen Gupta
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