Set the stage for growth. (US manufacturing industry) ('94-'95 Buyers Guide Issue) (Editorial)

A decade ago it was fashionable among some groups to lament the impending demise of American manufacturing. These forecasts of doom were usually based on the allegedly overwhelming productive superiority of foreign companies, plus the general incompetence of American management, American workers, or whatever faction the self-styled experts held in lowest esteem at any given moment.

They were wrong. Manufacturing is alive and well in the United States. Nonetheless, the past decade has been a turbulent time for the manufacturing sector of the American economy. In a recent policy study, Kenneth Chilton, deputy director at the Center for the Study of American Businesses, …