On US Manufacturing...

EdgenRootsdotcom

I work, and have always worked in the semiconductor industry most of my adult life directly, or directly attached-at-the-hip to a manufacturing facility.

In my post on the 10 American Industries That May Never Recover, they omitted manufacturing.

The facilities (wafer fabrication facilities, colloquially "fabs") are defined primarily by the real estate they print die on - 100mm (4"), 200mm (8") or the current standard 300mm (12"). Plans are to build a 450mm facility in the US (18" - a large pizza). Each of the former still exists, like Cree Semiconductor in North Carolina - 4", planning to "move up" to 6" (150mm).

I recall some years ago, going to my oldest son's school and some of his friends' schools with discarded/scrapped wafers and microscopes to look at the printed circuits (primitive now by today's standards). I'd describe for 7 - 10-year-old kids the energy band gap (LOTS of pretty pictures), and how that described insulators, conductors and semiconductors. I even smocked up for the kids - sweaty business, as smocks are uncomfortably HOT without laminar flow - giving back, trying to inspire others to follow me in science.

One young lady that came to her teacher's class after I'd begun my smock presentation, expressed absolute shock when I took my smock hood off: "You're black!" I saved her blushing teacher some embarrassment. Smiling, I said: "I've been that all my life, child." I quickly moved to another subject.

I also recall taking the same "show" to an elementary school far from my own kid's suburban neighborhood - to a socioeconomically deprived one, much like my own in North Carolina. The kids there were not able to see themselves beyond what impressed them the most - sadly, not someone that looked like them in science, but others that had in their minds, status, money and power.

I wonder about them now, as much as I wonder about the future of US Manufacturing...and, attached-at-its-hip innovation and education. We must have the ability to make what we dream, and inspire younger dreamers of all backgrounds to follow.

An excerpt from Technology Review (continued on the link below):

If you believe Thomas Friedman's assertion that "the world is flat," and that moving manufacturing to places where production is cheap makes companies more competitive, such a shift might not matter beyond its implications for the U.S. economy and its workers. But the United States remains the world's most prolific source of new technologies, particularly materials-based ones, and evidence is growing that its diminished manufacturing capabilities could severely cripple global innovation. There are ample reasons to believe that the model of the U.S. computer industry—which has successfully outsourced much of its production in the last few decades and made design, not manufacturing, its priority—will not work effectively for companies trying to commercialize innovations in energy, advanced materials, and other emerging sectors.

Technology Review: Can We Build Tomorrow's Breakthroughs?