James L Adams—People and Products

The Third Industrial Revolution?

Immediately after my last post, the Economist magazine devoted a couple of articles and its monthly special report to the increasingly discussed “third industrial revolution”, in which manufacturing will be increasingly based on computer control and such processes as 3d printing (additive manufacture). This has resulted in quite a bit of interesting discussion on the internet.  You will see some of it if you put “Economist Magazine April 21, 2012 A Third Industrial Revolution” into your  browser.  Devotees of this third industrial revolution are sure that manufacturing, and the economics and politics of it, will continue to  change to require much less labor and be more dependent on digitally controlled and revolutionary processes. Among other advantages they see, is the return of manufacturing to wealthier countries, because labor costs will no longer be as large a factor. It is true that the cost of such things as 3d printers is rapidly falling, and that the aerospace industry is using them increasingly for manufacturing such things as titanium parts.  But this move has been going on for some time (at least since the entry of computer aided design, computer aided manufacturing, and digitally controlled machining centers), and will continue, but not as rapidly as some people imagine. 

Historically, new technologies have taken some 50 years to mature. Not only must the technology itself mature, but individual values, social norms, and economic and political beliefs must change if there is to be a true revolution.  I first used a computer, a large ÎBM  mainframe. in the 1960’s  (actually I gave problems to a programmer and the programmer gave me the answer). I first owned a personal computer (an IBM PC) in the early 1980’s. It was a long way from this to my present computer and to the age of Facebook, Twitter, iPhones, computer-aided design and manufacture, machining centers, and all of the other digital applications of the present.  But we are obviously still searching for the optimum use of this technology, which really began some 80 years ago.  The first digital computer is now thought to be  the ABC, which was developed at Iowa State College in the late 1930’s, followed by the better-known ENIAC, developed at the University of Pennsylvania in the mid 1940’s.  But these both utilized vacuum tubes, and it was not until the development of the integrated circuit around 1960 that the path to modern digital technology was truly opened.  That was approximately 50 years ago. And many people are still not comfortable with it.

The 3^rd industrial revolution will similarly take a while.  The first one is thought to have lasted from approximately 1750 to 1850,  That’s about right.  It required not only steam and steel, but people moving to cities and working by the clock, large organizations with hierarchical structures, dealing with industrial pollutants, and many other changes in life style. 

It has taken us at least 100 years to develop the products and infrastructure that comprise our      "automobile revolution”.  We will continue to rely on people in manufacturing for some time, increasingly assisted (or displaced) by smart machines. And since the median income in the world is now approximately $1200 per person, there will continue to be trainable workers aplenty.  There are many advantages to human labor.  Chinese factories are valued because they can rapidly make changes in products and change the size of their workforce, as well as for their low wage scale.   Outsourcing is influenced by tax structures and other business incentives as well as by lower labor costs. As the “revolution” changes the way products are manufactured, the world must deal with the costs (lower employment, economic shifts?) as well as the profits.

And no matter how they are manufactured, products will necessarily improve in overall quality.

Why Manufacturing?

The first question that Dave Beach asked me in the “conversation” I mentioned in my post of May 16, was “Why is manufacturing important?” I gave a short talk on my Good Products, Bad Products book in an annual “Stanford Authors” event at the Stanford Humanities Center yesterday, and the same question came up.  On May 5^th I will be giving a talk to the Stanford Alumni chapter in Portland, Oregon, and am again expecting the same question.

There is much discussion of this issue in the government, in universities, and among the general public. If you want examples, just look on the internet.  People seem to agree that manufacturing is clearly important to our species, and that Manufacturing is also vital to the U.S,  economy, and in fact that of most other countries.  "Mixed" economies are thought to be more stable.  Manufacturing is a tried and true method of creating value, keeping the balance of payments under control, and providing jobs for those who are a questionable fit for such things as the “service " sector, or the “information ” sector.  The U.S. also has a lot of residual pride in the “made in the U.S.A.” product and the tradition of leading the world in manufacturing, which is now being threatened by China.

If you try to find dependable statistics on the situation, you find various interpretations and massive arguments as to what is actually happening.  As you may know, the manufacturing output of the U.S. measured in dollars has continued to climb over the years.  It is true that China, in particular, has drastically increased its manufacturing output, but the U.S. retains about 20%of the world’s manufacturing output (about the same as China).  In 1970 the U.S. produced slightly under 30% of the world’s manufactured products, but the drop to 20% is because of increases in other countries, not because of a drop in the overall dollar amount of U.S. manufacturing. At the same time, the number of employees in the U.S.manufacturing sector has dropped precipitously, partly because of outsourcing, but also because of increased productivity due to changes in technology, organizational approaches.  The nature of manufacturing has also changed, since the U.S. has responded to lower labor costs in other countries by moving toward higher value-added products.

The traditional measure of productivity in manufacturing (output in dollars divided by number of employees) has approximately tripled since 1970.  This pleases some economists.  But these factors have resulted in a decrease in U.S. employment in manufacturing from 19 million in the late 1970’s to 12 million at present.   During this period the  manufacturing output has grown.  But productivity is a double edged sword, since it can be increased by decreasing employment, as well as making more products.

The problems I see are a blow to our national pride, and especially a loss certain types of  jobs in the U.S.  We are definitely becoming more of a service economy.  The fastest growing sectors of the economy are financial services and medical services. Many people think this is wonderful.  I remember reading an article in which the author extolled this change, because he concluded that rather than working on uncomfortable assembly lines doing repetitive labor, people could become doctors, lawyers, professors, and engineers.  Unfortunately not everyone wants to spend the time and money for the training required to do such things, and I even think it is fair to say that some people would not be very good at such jobs.

When I was in high school I wanted to become a tool and die maker – a skilled job producing tangible products.  I like skilled jobs and I like being involved with producing tangible objects.  But I would find it difficult to locate a job as a tool and die maker in the U.S. these days.  Computer controlled machining centers have taken over.  For various reasons, after becoming an engineer and working in industry for a while, I became a professor (service economy).  I was fortunate in being able still to be involved in manufacturing and working with my hands through my consulting, teaching, and hobbies. 

I would not like to work in medical services, or especially financial services.  I love ATM machines because I don’t even have to go inside of banks any more.  And I certainly would not like to work on Wall Street. In fact, I don’t think medical services and financial services will furnish ever-increasing numbers of jobs  in the future.  We don’t seem to be able to afford many more medical services, and  financial services are at this time feeling a good big of pain. If you have never read Michael Lewis’ book The Big Short (W. W. Norton, 2010), you should.  It is a great read chronicling the housing loan-induced crash.  And of course, do we really need more lawyers?

The computer and other technical advances have caused a large reduction of highly skilled jobs, many in the manufacturing of products (so-called de-skilling).   This is a loss for many people in the country who like and whose interests are matched by such work.  Had I married my high school sweetheart instead of  wandering off to college,  which was the norm for most of my high school friends, I just might have spent my life as one of them, and if not retired, be looking for a job.

I think we have a problem here, because I certainly know a lot of people who seem to have a serious computer allergy and would not like to work in an office or store.  In fact, I know people who would not even like to work indoors. 

General Topics on Manufacturing and Product Quality

Since the Stanford ME 314 Good Products, Bad Products course is now over, I will leave the topic.  Should any of you reading this blog be teaching a similar course, or if you would like to do so, contact Dave Beach ([email protected]), and he will be glad to send you information or conspire with you.

I am scheduled to give a few talks on my book, as part of the routine of bringing it to people’s attention.  Dave and I did a “conversation” on the topics contained in the book to a couple of hundred people on the Stanford campus last week, and it was fun.  The format called for Dave to ask me questions, and for me to answer them as best as I could.  I actually had the easier role, because I had the option of muttering a few words and then saying “what do you think, Dave?”. 

I thought it might be of interest to discuss a few of the questions and answers (?) with you.  The questions are here.  Look through them and think about how you might answer them.  I thought that beginning with the next post, I would give you my personal, perhaps biased opinion on some of them.  But just so you know that the U.S. is not alone in worrying about such questions, here is an interesting article on Japanese concerns about the topic of manufacturing that was on the front page of  the April 16 edition of the New York Times.

Interesting use of CourseWork software in Stanford Good Products Bad Products course (ME 314)

The Good Products, Bad Products course at Stanford (ME 314) uses the Stanford course management system CourseWork, now an open source release shared with other schools.  Stanford is now involved in the Sakai project, so that CourseWork 3.0 will no longer be available, but comparable software will be through the Sakai project.  For information on the Sakai project, click here.

In brief, CourseWork allows easy communication over the internet between students and instructors.  One feature of it is a discussion forum, in which student work can be submitted to the instructor and comments/grades/etc. from the instructor submitted to the student.  The work can also be made available to the other students.

David Beach, who now teaches the course, brings in many guest speakers who are involved in the design, development, and marketing of high quality products.  He also assigns my Good Products, Bad Products book, and has the students do the thought problems at the end of the chapters and submit written answers. There is some discussion of the book in class, but also many other activities that require class time.  Also the class is large (100 + students) and many of the students are off-campus taking the course over the internet.  Discussion is extremely helpful in attempting to better understand product quality, so how can he assure feedback to the students and promote discussion outside of class?

The on-campus students are divided into groups of four, and at the end of the quarter each group is asked to give a presentation centered around a company doing a particularly good job of achieving one of the components of high quality contained in my book.  Dave is a fanatic on presentation quality that includes efficient use of media, so he is able to limit each presentation to ten minutes, plus five minutes for questions. The presentations are typically very good indeed.

This year the groups were asked to review the individual student submissions to the thought problems in the book that pertain to the category of their final presentation, give those students feedback on  CourseWork  (open to all), and select the ones they believed to be the best.  This year there were four groups giving presentations on each chapter, so the results of this "pick the best ones" exercise provided  potential additional information for assigning final grades in the course. The groups are thinking about their presentation, so they have a certain amount of "expertise" on the topic, and the individual student submissions help the groups  think about their final presentation as well as resulting in more feedback.   In addition, there are general comments by the students on each other’s submissions.  All of  this added to more discussion outside of class.

This was the first time this approach to encouraging outside discussion and evaluation between the students was used , and I thought it worked quite well, and with a few changes will work even better in the future.    There will supposedly be new “CourseWork” type software available next year that will be similar, but improved. I am hoping for the similarity, because one problem I find with much computer software is that as soon as one learns to use it well, it changes, often by adding new features that add to its complexity and make it more difficult for new users.

After-thoughts on the Stanford Course ME 314 Good Products, Bad Products

 

Due to my time constraints, there were no final student presentations in my post on the chapter in the Good Prodcts, Bad Products course entitled Symbolism and Cultural Values (Chapter 8).  The students did submit individual assignments, which first of all asked them to choose a subculture of which they felt a part and then to choose the product that was most symbolic of this culture, choose the product that was most symbolic of them, and finally choose a product that was not at all symbolic of them.  As I have been doing, I will link you to the student submissions from the 2010 class.  One of the summary pages lists the responses to the first two “choices” above, and is here.  The other lists the responses to the third and fourth “choices” above and is here.  The numbers correlate between the two pages, if you want to follow individuals.  I did not include responses to the question as to whether the product most symbolic was symbolic of them. They were to some extent, but most of of the students, to their credit, resisted the stereotyping of the product.

I am sorry that the time did not allow more complete coverage of this topic, because it is my feeling that as population densities, and population in general, rise, there is more and more desire, and possibly need, for people to belong to a culture (or sub culture) that they respect and admire and that shares their values.  Industrial products play a role in this.  Think of the Prius, the Parker shotgun, the slow cooker, the Harley Davidson, the  private jet, the home steam espresso/capuccino maker, the recliner, the gas grill, the Ford F-150 pickup, and the iPhone.  The traditional direction of industry, has been to try to attract an increasing segment of the population with a product.  This results eventually in a situation which we now face with midsize four-door automobiles or kitchen appliances – they vary only slightly in details from one manufacturer to another throughout the world, or at least the “developed” world.

I am a fan of the traditional trucks in India, which have typically been sold without cabs, allowing the owners huge variation in applying and furnishing the cab—a lower income version of the days in which one would have a custom cab built for one’s Rolls Royce chassis and drive train. I suspect this will not last, and within a few years, Indian trucks will start looking the same as those in the so-called developed world.

 In my high school and college days, there was a wide variation in personal possessions, partly because there was not much money around.  As an example, when I was in high school cars were old and often repaired, and we would modify them partly because we wanted to put a personal mark on our possessions, and in the process became even more closely associated with our cult.  Extreme lowering (the forbears of low-riders), extreme funk, extreme (in those days) speed, etc.

The sub-cultures in my high school were both racial and reflections of the income level and urbanity of the junior  high schools that fed our high schools.  Because of the time and the age group, there was considerable animosity between the sub-cultures, extending to fights, social snubbing, and other painful behavior.  But it was exciting and educational, and we all felt good about being members of our “car” club, even the Sultans of Rialto.

Of course there were other more significant sub-cultural divides—Caltech students vs. Pasadena City College students (source of girls, to the annoyance of the male students there), nerds vs. fuzzies, small school vs. big school, etc.  I never will forget the thrill and anxiety experienced when I escorted a U.S.C sorority girl to a formal sorority/fraternity dance at U.S.C., and won the presigious raffle prize of the night— a set of Tommy Trojan cufflinks.  Fortunately my date did not rat on me, so I returned to Caltech unharmed.

Different cultures and sub cultures cause life to be rich.  Stanford is much more interesting now that it has become more global and offers much more cultural diversity.  California is wonderful because one does not need to travel far to experience different cultures.  A casual trip with local stops from Stanford University into the Central Valley, visiting say Biola and Fresno, and returning by way of Monterey and San Francisco, making sure that the final lap includes Hunter’s Point and East Palo Alto, gives one a fascinating experience with many cultures without the need for a trans ocean flight. Long live cultural diversity.  May industrial products encourage it!