Manufacturing & Technology News articles from October 2005

Manufacturing & Technology News archives from October 2005

Political appointees re-write commerce dept. report on offshore outsourcing.
October 12, 2005... The Commerce Department has responded to a half-year-old request by Manufacturing and Technology News for the release a long-awaited study on the issue of "offshore outsourcing" of IT service-sector jobs and high-tech industries. But the...

NIST laboratory construction budget is riddled with pork.
October 12, 2005... One of the discrepancies to be faced by the congressional conferees who will soon begin attempting to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the appropriations bill covering the Department of Commerce (H.R. 2862) is to be found in the...

Manufacturing R&D makes it to the floor of the House of Reps.
October 12, 2005... The House passed the Manufacturing Technology Competitiveness Act of 2005 (H.R. 250) late last month by a vote of 394-24. But the fact that no companion has yet been introduced in the Senate brings to mind the fate of 2004's similar bill of the...

More details on innovation summit.
October 12, 2005... The "innovation summit" announced this spring by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) has acquired an official name: "The National Summit on Competitiveness: Investing in U.S. Innovation." Its time and place have been set: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Dec. 6 at...

Budgets for S&T programs enter a period of limbo: continuing resolutions could produce back-end budget cuts.
October 12, 2005... The Advanced Technology Program (ATP) and the Department of Commerce's Technology Administration (TA), each marked by one house of Congress to be eliminated on Oct. 1, were still in operation last week under the terms of a continuing resolution...

National Semiconductor CEO Brian Halla: 'we are sitting in the middle of a perfect storm of technology neglect'.
October 12, 2005... National Semiconductor CEO Brian Halla was trying out images, looking for one vivid enough to bring home his misgivings about America's current readiness for world competition in technology. Might it be Sputnik's flyover awing his Midwestern...

DARPA semiconductor R&D program takes a 'strategic pause'.
October 12, 2005... For the first time in decades, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has decided not to fund research in advanced lithography in 2006. "DARPA's Advanced Lithography program will take a strategic pause in FY2006 to reassess...

Dell's new plant in North Carolina puts inventory back in the factory.
October 12, 2005... Dell Inc. has opened a new factory in Winston-Salem, N.C., its largest factory in the world. The 750,000-square-foot plant will be able to produce one computer every five seconds and will employ 700 workers when it is fully operational next...

ITAA creates panel to press president on competitiveness.
October 12, 2005... The Information Technology Association of America has appointed a new task force to study how the United States can maintain its international competitiveness. The Arlington, Va.-based trade group's "Coalition for America's High Tech Future"...

Factories are closing down, and opening.
October 12, 2005... CLOSING: The Brunswick Corp. bowling ball factory is closing in Muskegon, Mich., and is moving to Reynosa, Mexico, where labor costs will be 90 percent lower. The 99-year-old factory will lay off 115 workers. "It was like somebody had just...

Academies plan innovation event.
October 12, 2005... A conference on how the United States intends to maintain its leadership in innovation, science and technology will be hosted by the National Academies of Sciences Oct.18-19. The Academies' Board on Science, Technology and Economic Policy will...

Nucor deploys grass-roots approach to changing Washington trade policies.
October 28, 2005... Nucor Corp. the largest steel producer in the United States and perhaps the most respected (and efficient) steel company in the world, has found that the federal government has no interest in preserving the U.S. industrial base. The company...

Wal-Mart's imports soar; U.S. exports junk.
October 28, 2005... Wal-Mart's imports via ocean container surged by 27.5 percent in 2004, according to the data compiled by the Journal of Commerce and its Port Import/Export Reporting Service (PIERS). Wal-Mart imported 576,000 20-foot equivalent container units...

Europeans issue policy to bolster manufacturing.
October 28, 2005... The European Union has released a new "industrial policy" aimed at ensuring the continued health of its manufacturing sector. The EU says it needs to protect the viability of manufacturing because it accounts for 34 million jobs, three-quarters...

National Academies panel calls for the creation of an 'Energy-ARPA'.
October 28, 2005... Creating within the Department of Energy (DOE) a "lean, effective, agile [and] largely independent" entity modeled on the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is among the actions being proposed by a National Academies...

Former CEOs of Lockheed & Merck call on U.S. to rise above 'Gathering Storm'.
October 28, 2005... Two prominent retired CEOs, Norman Augustine of Lockheed Martin and Roy Vagelos of Merck, on Oct. 20 told the House Science Committee that they will back some form of tax hike if that is what it takes to boost federal investment in long-term...

EU issues 'action plan' for R&D.
October 28, 2005... The European Union has issued its first "action plan" aimed at increasing the amount of research conducted in Europe. "The Commission's motivation for producing the action plan is the worrying stagnation of research and development intensity in...

British manufacturing is on the ropes.
October 28, 2005... British manufacturers are being pummeled by rising oil prices and export orders that are declining, according to the Confederation for British Industry. Manufacturers are struggling to pass on the increased cost of oil to their customers. Four...

South Korean mfg. is on the brink.
October 28, 2005... The South Korean manufacturing sector is "on the brink," according to a survey of the nation's 523 largest manufacturing companies conducted by the nation's largest daily newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo. Operating profits for the group that includes...

Delphi's Shingo Prizes can't save it from oblivion.(Legacy Costs Overwhelm Excellence In Manufacturing)
October 28, 2005... No other company has won more Shingo Prizes for Excellence in Manufacturing than Delphi Corp. Over the past four years, Delphi has won 19 Shingo Prizes for individual factories, accounting for 42 percent of the 45 total awards. But excellence...

Stanford opens new design institute.
October 28, 2005... Stanford University has received a $35-million private donation to create an institute aimed at helping companies design better products. "If your decade-old VCR is still blinking 12:00, welcome to the club," says the new Hasso-Plattner...

Congress wants to know what happened to Commerce Dept. report on outsourcing.
October 28, 2005... Pointed questions regarding the content, length and timing of a Technology Administration (TA) report on the offshoring by U.S. companies of professional-level jobs in high-tech sectors have been put to Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez in a...

Letters to the editor.(Letter to the Editor)
October 28, 2005... The story in the last issue of Manufacturing & Technology News about the Commerce Department's report on offshore outsourcing, "Political Appointees Re-Write Commerce Department Report on Offshore Outsourcing," generated a flurry of e-mails and...

Prepare for major oil disruptions, says Stanford University Modeling Center.
October 28, 2005... "Your odds of drawing a club, diamond or heart from a shuffled deck of playing cards are three out of four," says a new Stanford University research report. "The odds of a foreign oil disruption happening over the next 10 years are slightly...

U.S. companies can't tell difference between their own products and Chinese fakes.
October 28, 2005... Manufacturers need to make sure their products aren't being counterfeited illegally by Chinese producers, but that might be difficult because counterfeits can be hard to detect even by companies that made the original product. "The...

Manufacturing is a risky business.
October 28, 2005... Manufacturing CEOs are being forced to make higher risk decisions due to the accelerating pace of change, according to a study by Grant Thornton. "American CEOs are faced with daunting challenges, ranging from intensified competition to a...

Spending crazy Congress.
October 28, 2005... Congress is going spending crazy, says the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Four bills that have recently passed and signed into law by President Bush--the Iraq supplemental, the energy and highway bills and the emergency...

Top 100 U.S. importers via ocean container transport--2004.
October 28, 2005... As measured in 20-foot-equivalent container units or TEUs The first number listed for each company is the number of TEUs imported in 2004, followed by 2003 imported TEUs and 2002. NR means the company was not on the list for that year....

Top 100 U.S. exporters via ocean container transport--2004.
October 28, 2005... As measured in 20-foot-equivalent container units or TEUs The first number is the number of TEUs exported in 2004, followed by TEUs exported in 2003 and 2002. NR means the company was not on the list for that year. SOURCE: Journal of...

Manufacturing profits slow to recover.
October 28, 2005... Profits for manufacturing companies remain weak, despite strong economic growth in the country, reports the National Association of Manufacturers and the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI in a joint report. An "unprecedented" drop in profits by 67...

Of the 14 million jobs in manufacturing, the pay is pretty good.
October 28, 2005... It pays to work for a manufacturing company, according to the latest "Annual Survey of Compensation in Manufacturing." Most jobs in the manufacturing sector pay substantially higher wages than the same jobs in the rest of the economy. Even...