Manufacturing & Technology News articles from January 2004

Manufacturing & Technology News archives from January 2004

Manufacturing issue rises to highest level in federal government.
January 5, 2004... The crisis in manufacturing is beginning to percolate up the chain of command within the White House. The Bush administration is in the process of creating a new Interagency Working Group (IWG) on Manufacturing Research and Development. ...

Top Bush official says official policy of U.S. is for a strong dollar.
January 5, 2004... U.S. manufacturers have been clamoring for the Bush administration to press for immediate relief from a high-valued dollar. A half-dozen legislative bills have been introduced in Congress aimed at stopping Asian countries from manipulating...

DOD tells contractors to start reporting foreign subcontracts.
January 5, 2004... Congressional pressure on the Department of Defense to buy weapons made with a greater percentage of American-made components is beginning to have an impact on the Pentagon and its contractors. Diedre Lee, director of Defense Procurement and...

Justice Department has record year settling pollution claims.
January 5, 2004... The Department of Justice collected a record $203 million in 2003 from companies that broke environmental regulations. During the three previous years, total awards collected averaged approximately $75 million per year. "The record-setting...

The House blames the Senate, the Senate blames the House.(The Story Behind MEP's Demise)
January 5, 2004... The unexpected turn of events that befell the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program in the congressional appropriations conference committee took less than a minute to occur. The resulting loss of 62 percent of the program's...

Protesters prepare for New York offshore outsourcing conference.
January 5, 2004... An upcoming conference in New York City on how companies can capitalize on sending service sector jobs offshore is raising the ire of grass roots organizations fighting the growing tend of outsourcing U.S. jobs by corporate America. A variety...

Commerce Department says U.S. Textile Industry is healthy but not competitive.(or is it competitive but not healthy?)
January 5, 2004... The U.S. textile, apparel and footwear industries are closing plants and laying off hundreds of thousands of workers, but that doesn't mean the industries are not competitive, claims a new report from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Between...

Manufacturing groups join forces to fight Free Trade Agreements.
January 5, 2004... A coalition of 18 manufacturing groups has called for a moratorium on all new free trade agreements including the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) completed by the Bush administration on December 17. The coalition also wants a...

Mfg. trade associations plan big Washington blitz.
January 5, 2004... The Coalition for the Future of Manufacturing is scheduling a "Legislative Fly-In" to Washington, D.C., in February to promote U.S. manufacturing. "The forum and fly-in are timed to have maximum impact on the 2004 legislative and political...

China Commission schedules field hearings.
January 5, 2004... The congressional U.S.-China Commission is heading to South Carolina for a field hearing to learn how trade with China is impacting the U.S. manufacturing sector. Commissioners want to gain "a better understanding of how South Carolina's steel,...

N.Y. studies mfg. revival.
January 5, 2004... Upstate New York is trying to figure out how to save its manufacturing base. The Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology has initiated a "Roadmap" project aimed at developing a plan of prioritized...

Minnesota appoints manufacturing czar.
January 5, 2004... Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty has appointed a new "Manufacturers' Advocate" within the state's Department of Employment and Economic Development. Diane Knutson, who has been with the Minnesota economic development agency since 1995, will act...

U.S. manufacturers are split on free trade; some vow to fight CAFTA while others will seek congressional approval.
January 5, 2004... The recently concluded Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is raising alarm in the U.S. textile and apparel industries. The American Textile Manufacturers Institute (ATMI) worked for six months with U.S. negotiators to design an...

European Union approves creation of basic research funding agency.
January 5, 2004... The European Union has tentatively approved the creation of a new European body to support basic research throughout the continent. The recently created European Research Council Expert Group has concluded that funding for basic research should...

Automobile industry delays plans to introduce hybrid electric vehicles.
January 5, 2004... The commercial development of hybrid electric vehicles has slowed considerably and sales figures will not meet previous projections, says J.D. Power & Associates. U.S. consumers are projected to purchase 350,000 hybrid vehicles by 2008, down...

U.S. population continues to boom.
January 5, 2004... The United States population continues to grow at a rapid rate. During 2003, the country added one person every 12 seconds and the world's third largest nation grew by 2.82 million people, up 1 percent over 2002. At the start of 2004, the U.S....

Something different is happening to plastics industry.
January 5, 2004... The U.S. plastics industry is undergoing a structural change that isn't pretty. The industry employed nearly 2.2 million workers and generated $393 billion in shipments in 2002, but the trends are downward. Employment in the industry dropped by...

Commerce department finishes long-awaited manufacturing study.
January 16, 2004... The Bush administration on January 16 released its long-anticipated study on what the government should do to address the steep downturn in the U.S. manufacturing sector. Originally scheduled to be released in September, the 88-page report...

New mfg. lobbying group rises from ashes of MEP funding debacle.
January 16, 2004... A new trade group has been formed in Washington, D.C., to pursue the legislative and financial interests of the nation's manufacturing extension centers. The United States Small Manufacturing Coalition (USSMC) has incorporated as a lobbying...

How Mantech funding works: 'earmarks'.
January 16, 2004... The annual battle to restore funding to the Defense Department's Manufacturing Technology (Mantech) program is getting old, say congressional staffers working on DOD budgets. If the Bush administration, the Office of the Secretary of Defense...

DARPA considers mfg. R&D initiative.
January 16, 2004... Industry members of the Coalition for Defense Manufacturing Technology met with senior staff members of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in mid-December in an effort to promote DARPA's adoption of a manufacturing R&D...

Reforms help boost economic growth: India feels a lot better about its prospects: India's economy is on an upward trajectory and is being propelled by a growing sense of confidence, according to dozens of speakers attending the India Economic Summit in New Delhi.
January 16, 2004... India's economy is growing at 7 percent per year and the government is embracing a wide range of economic and social reforms that could boost growth to more than 10 percent a year. "Reform policies have increased the creativity of India," said...

Quotes.
January 16, 2004... "Somebody asked me: 'What do you do when you just really feel like quitting?' I had to think about that, because I was trying to think of the last time I really thought about quitting. It's been a long time since I thought, 'This is just too...

Tough year ahead for textile industry.
January 16, 2004... The U.S. textile industry "will be in a fight for its survival in the coming year," says James Chesnutt, president of National Spinning Co. and president of the American Textile Manufacturers Institute (ATMI). "This will be a tough fight, but...

Strengthening economy hasn't boosted mfg. jobs.
January 16, 2004... With the loss of 26,000 manufacturing jobs in December, U.S. manufacturers have reduced employment for 41 consecutive months. Since July 2000, U.S. manufacturers have shed 2,814,000 workers. Last year, 478,000 manufacturing jobs vanished,...

Federal pension guaranty program shows signs of stress.
January 16, 2004... The federal government's Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation's insurance program for pension plans sponsored by a single employer suffered a net loss of $7.6 billion in fiscal year 2003, according to the agency's Annual Report released on...

Decline of U.S. manufacturing is a topic for serious journalism.
January 16, 2004... The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has completed a massive assessment of the manufacturing crisis in America's heartland and the corresponding rise of China. The four-day series was written by reporter John Schmid, who spent four months traveling...

IBM at the top of U.S. Patents.
January 16, 2004... International Business Machines has retained its top position for receiving patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The company increased the number of patents it received last year to 3,415, a number that is 70 percent higher than...

One of the government's largest industrial organizations plunges into a lean conversion.
January 16, 2004... The Army Materiel Command is one of the military's largest industrial operations, employing 50,000 people in 149 locations worldwide. "If a soldier shoots it, drives it, flies it, wears it or eats it, AMC provides it," says the Command. ...

Manufacturing trade associations to meet face-to-face to call a truce and develop a common policy agenda.
January 16, 2004... The National Coalition for Advanced Manufacturing and the Association for Manufacturing Technology are organizing a conference in Washington of manufacturing trade associations to discuss how they can better work together on increasingly...

Calif. mfg. center receives funds.
January 16, 2004... The national Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program will likely suffer from a major budget cut this year, but one center has tapped into the federal largess. The California Manufacturing Technology Center has received a $5.1 million...