Jim Smith Ph.D. ABD

Manufacturers often fail to recognize the ability of their employees to learn and think.

Several respondents to my original blog say the 787's battery problems are a minor blip that Boeing will correct quickly. My impression is that the battery is becoming aviation’s equivalent of the Ford Pinto.

Did cost-cutting strategy jeopardize the production of what should have been an engineering triumph?

Our guest blogger wonders whether Apple's recent decision to invest $100 million to manufacture iMacs in the United States is a token gesture or a sign of things to come.

Automation is wonderfully economical—except when it’s not. Time and again, I’ve seen smart engineers make dumb automation decisions, some of them ruinous.

The demise of telecom giant Nortel may have been caused by its contract manufacturer, Huawei.

Increasingly, China is losing its cost advantages. Workers are striking at Chinese factories. Chinese suppliers copy Western products to become competitors. Time to market is longer. And now we can add electronic espionage.

The federal government is not entirely to blame for the cost differential between U.S. and Chinese manufacturers.

Many products made in low-wage countries could, in fact, be produced here economically. There are three reasons why they are not.

Offshoring has, quite simply, gutted the American middle class. But it took more than the presence of several hundred million unemployed Chinese to make offshoring feasible. Some are technological, some are cultural.