Manufacturing Resurgance

There is a great article by Bill Greiner in Forbes concerning the recent solid performance of US based manufacturing.  In the article Greiner notes a three-year trend of manufacturing activity that outpaces the overall economic GDP.  Since that has not happened in 50 years there is obvious reason for optimism.

I agree with Bill's observations that this could prove to be sustainable partially due to a leveling of the playing field in terms of the labor cost advantage shrinking for economies outside of the US.  Additionally, domestic manufacturers have done a great job of improving their performance.  This growth trend will also be sustainable due to a relatively subtle but surging change in the way manufacturers design and optimize their operations.

Automation has led to lower head counts on the factory floor but no longer is the design of automation strictly guided by the ability to reduce head count.  The growing trend in automation is to add value, not necessarily to reduce labor.  We evaluate automation today simply by its ability to load a truck at the dock with a quality product that can be produced at a lower cost than it could without the automation.  If the trucks aren't leaving the dock without quality product than we are not doing our job as manufacturing engineers.

Value based automation design may seem like an obvious concept but having cut my teeth as an engineer in the "Roger and Me" days of General Motors, I can say with certainty that automation was developed with the idea of eliminating labor, period.  I admit that in those days I was guilty of designing systems featuring tons of cool automatic features that relied on an operator for some critical function that was a tiny part of the overall cycle time.  I also designed systems that were so automatic, and so capital rich/maintenance intensive that no operator was required.  In hindsight neither of these methods added the value to the product that they should have added.

Today we realize that there is a balance to be achieved between these extremes.  There are certain tasks that operators are really productive and efficient at.  Let the operator do those tasks.  There are other tasks that can be more optimally completed by the machine.  Let the machine do those tasks.  The true skill of an automation engineer is demonstrated in their ability to strike a balance between these manual/machine functions.  When executed properly the "automatic" system that results can not be matched in value by either a large automatic system or a low cost labor factory. 

On a follow-up post I will give an example of a great project that illustrates this engineering balance.

Welcome

Welcome to InAutomation - A Method for Manufacturing.  This blog will discuss relative topics in automation and manufacturing.  We will also focus on the InAutomation Method used by Innovative Automation, Inc. as a means of developing unique solutions for the unique applications of our customers.  We look forward to your feedback and comments.  Our purpose will be to develop and share information that will improve our ability to provide unique solutions and improve manufacturing methods and applications.