Manufacturing & Technology News articles from December 2005

Manufacturing & Technology News archives from December 2005

Competitiveness warnings spur congress to act.
December 22, 2005... For the first time since the 1988 Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act, a major new piece of legislation has been introduced to address issues related to the competitiveness of U.S. industry. The new bill--the National Innovation Act of 2005...

Earmarks, earmarks everywhere in final 2006 science budget.
December 22, 2005... Record federal budget deficits, a major war in Iraq, a new prescription drug benefit and funds needed to rebuild the Gulf Coast have not stopped Congress from spending a lot more money on pet projects in their districts. A substantial number of...

Layoffs, worker shortages go hand-in-hand.(Dummies Need Not Apply)
December 22, 2005... Delphi, General Motors and Merck might be laying off tens of thousands of manufacturing workers--to join the three million others who have lost their jobs in the past four years--but that doesn't mean there isn't demand for highly skilled...

Broad coalition perseveres in making mfg. skills standards system come to fruition.
December 22, 2005... After more than a decade of hard work, the Manufacturing Skills Standards Council (MSSC) is finally in business. In mid November, the group launched a system to assess and certify manufacturing industry workers' skills in production processes,...

Intel's warnings about desirability of U.S. as a place for business coming to fruition.
December 22, 2005... Speaking last February on behalf of the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation, a coalition formed last year to push for increased federal spending on basic research in the physical sciences and engineering, Intel CEO Craig Barrett...

FedEx positions itself for India mfg.
December 22, 2005... Federal Express expects the manufacturing sector in India to become a major source of growth for the company. In the past year, FedEx has added 10 flights a week into and out of India and has added 900 tones of capacity in Delhi for a total...

Democrats knock their heads against the wall.
December 22, 2005... Democratic members of the House Science Committee, told by a Commerce Department official they could expect a response by December 14 to questions they had submitted in October regarding a recent Technology Administration (TA) report on the...

U.S. falls behind China in tech exports.
December 22, 2005... China has overtaken the United States as the world's leading exporter of high-tech products, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). China exported $180 billion worth of information and communications...

Hank Cox, Vice President, Media Relations, National Association of Manufacturers.(Letter to the Editor)
December 22, 2005... "Your manuscript is both good and original," said Dr. Johnson to an aspiring young writer. "Unfortunately, the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good." The last issue of Manufacturing & Technology News...

At competitiveness summit, 50 minds agree: the onus rests upon Bush.
December 22, 2005... Business executives, university presidents, a handful of Bush administration cabinet members and Republican legislators gathered in Washington on Dec. 6 to make the case that the U.S. innovation engine is sputtering and must be reinvigorated...

Texas instrument CEO: patriotism will not keep jobs in the U.S.
December 22, 2005... When Texas Instruments two years ago decided to build a new $3-billion to 4-billion microelectronics fabrication facility in Dallas, Texas, it did so for one reason: it is where researchers were located. "If you look around the world, there are...

More senators get active in innovation issues.
December 22, 2005... The National Innovation Act (S. 2109), introduced in the Senate last week, is soon to be followed by a fraternal twin. A second bipartisan group of senators is readying a similarly wide-ranging piece of competitiveness legislation--and one...

Philadelphia church tells parishioners to prepare for life as paupers.
December 22, 2005... The Philadelphia Church of God is telling its Christian followers to prepare for a future devoid of economic prosperity. In an article in the December issue of its magazine The Trumpet, the church says the great boom years following WWII are...

Calendar of upcoming events.(Calendar)
December 22, 2005... January 8--10 International Conference on Advanced Design and Manufacture, Harbin, China. Sponsored by the European Commission, http://www.admec.ntu.ac.uk/ adm2006/. January 16--17 European Mfg. Strategies Summit, Munich, German. Sponsored...

Government spooks downplay China's growth.
December 22, 2005... The United States' September trade deficit with China was announced recently at just over $20 billion, a sum that keeps up the pace requisite to breaking last year's record of $162 billion. This may strike some as being significant, but there...