Oct 24, 2018

“MFG Day Motivates Youth to Pursue a Career in Manufacturing” By Michele Nash-Hoff, Saving U.S. Manufacturing Since 2012, thousands of manufacturers around the country open their doors to inspire and recruit the next generation of manufacturers on Manufacturing Day (MFG Day), which was held this year on Friday, October 5th.    MFG Day is produced by the National Association of Manufacturers and the Manufacturing Institute. MFG DAY had ambitious goals: “to change public perception of manufacturing, inspire students to pursue manufacturing careers, and strengthen the future of manufacturing by avoiding the talent shortage on the horizon.” According to the MFG Day website, “We wanted to correct the idea that manufacturing involved repetitive, unskilled tasks that happened in dark, dirty factories — a ridiculous idea to anyone who has actually worked in manufacturing — and show people what manufacturing really looks like.”   Those of us in the industry know that today’s manufacturing jobs are high skilled, and take place in clean, well-lit, technologically advanced facilities. The problem was that there was no way to know whether perceptions were changing until Deloitte became a sponsor of MFG DAY in 2015 and conducted surveys of attendees.    The results of the survey of 2015 showed: 81% of students emerged “more convinced that manufacturing provides careers that are interesting and rewarding.” 62% of students were “more motivated to pursue a career in manufacturing”  The 2016 survey results showed that the percentages rose to 84% and 64% respectively.   The 2016 Deloitte report said, “Projections indicate that roughly 600,000 people attended MFG DAY events in 2016 and that 267,000 of them were students. That means that nearly 225,000 students walked away from their MFG DAY 2016 event with a more positive perception of manufacturing, according to Deloitte’s findings…. Based on the 267,000-student attendance figure, that’s potentially 171,000 new members of a next-generation manufacturing workforce.”   The Deloitte surveys showed that “71 percent of student attendees both years said that they “were more likely to tell friends, family, parents, or colleagues about manufacturing after attending an event,” meaning that they weren’t just convinced — they were inspired.”   This year, the MFG Day website listed 2,739 events planned across the...

Oct 25, 2017

Published by the Coalition for a Prosperous America Press Release –  October 25, 2017 By Michele Nash-Hoff I am proud to announce the publication of Rebuild Manufacturing – the key to American Prosperity by the Coalition for a Prosperous (CPA). I am currently Chair of our California chapter of CPA. Michael Stumo, CEO of CPA, said, “”Michele has been instrumental in developing our California chapter and has spread the word about CPA’s issues and proposals in her Industry Week column. Her new book shows the adverse effect of offshoring and U. S. trade deficits on American manufacturing and highlights CPA’s proposals to eliminate the trade deficit and improve the business climate for American manufacturers with new trade and tax policies.” In 2012, CPA published the second edition of Michele’s previous book, Can American Manufacturing be Saved? Why we should and how we can. My new book is based on my nearly 200 articles for my column on Industry Week’s website and my presentations on behalf of CPA and the Reshoring Initiative for the past five years. My book describes the current state of American manufacturing, discusses what are the main threats to rebuilding American manufacturing and recommends what strategies, and analyzes how trade agreements have affected American manufacturing. I discuss the role “reshoring” plays in rebuilding American manufacturing, what is currently being done to rebuild American manufacturing, shows how American innovation and advanced manufacturing contribute to rebuilding American manufacturing, and how we can solve the skills gap and attract the next generation of manufacturing workers. The book provides case stories of how some American manufacturers are succeeding against global competition by developing innovative products and becoming Lean companies. It concludes with specific recommendations of strategies, policies, and actions that can be taken towards rebuilding the manufacturing industry in America. Steve Minter, Sr. Editor, Industry Week, wrote, “Rebuild Manufacturing” represents the latest installment of Michele Nash-Hoff’s tireless efforts to promote the strengthening of U.S. manufacturing. The book demonstrates her encyclopedic knowledge of the problems that have beset manufacturing but, more importantly, presents manufacturers, policymakers and other readers with insightful recommendations for actions that will improve U.S. industrial competitiveness and the American economy.” Den Black, President...

Mar 28, 2016

“California Manufacturing Task Force Urges New Manufacturing & Trade Strategies” By Michele Nash-Hoff, Saving U.S. Manufacturing At the Northern California Manufacturing Summit held in Sacramento on February 19, 2016, attendees had the opportunity to sign up to be on a Manufacturing Task Force to prepare a report after selecting the most important issues affecting manufacturing during the concluding breakout session. Over the last month, the Task Force conferred via conference call and email to create a report that was approved last week. As chair of the California chapter of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, one of the co-hosts of the event, I disseminated the report to all of the summit sponsors, partners, and attendees, as well as all of the Congressional Representatives, State Senators, and Assembly members in the Sacramento region. The report will be disseminated to the rest of the California Congressional delegation in the near future. The final report is shown below. “We are the business and community leader Task Force established by the ‘Northern California Manufacturing Summit’ event held in Sacramento on February 19, 2016. Nearly 100 business owners, civic, academic and labor leaders met in Sacramento for this nonpartisan economic summit to explore solutions to grow California’s manufacturing opportunities. Co-hosts Placer County, the City of Sacramento, the Coalition for a Prosperous America were joined by lead sponsors Gerdau and the United Steelworkers Union, as well as more than a dozen other local and regional business and community organizations to sponsor the event. Participants and event partners listed below collaborated and prioritized the most important issues that face California manufacturers. A Task Force was created to deliver the group’s consensus to policy makers and to work for implementation. A Manufacturing Strategy to promote growth should be a top state and national priority. Manufacturing not only creates innovation and wealth, but manufacturing has the highest jobs multiplier of any sector. Unfortunately, California lost 33.3% of its manufacturing industry representing more than 600,000 manufacturing jobs between 2000 – 2010, some to other countries and states. California is improving, but is lagging behind the rest of the U. S. in growth of the industry jobs (2% vs. 7.6 %.) Since the end of...

Feb 24, 2016

By Michele Nash-Hoff, Saving U.S. Manufacturing Hardly a week goes by without a report of Chinese “hacking” or Intellectual Property Theft, so it was no surprise that a published analysis by CrowdStrike, a California-based cyber security company, revealed that China violated its cyber agreement with the United States the very next day after  CNBC reported that President Obama and China’s President Xi Jinping agreed to not conduct cyber theft of intellectual property on Friday, September 25, 2015. President Obama said. “The United States government does not engage in cyber economic espionage for commercial gain, and today I can announce that our two countries have reached a common understanding on a way forward.” However, the U.S.-China agreement “does not prohibit cyber spying for national security purposes.” It is interesting to note that the day before the announcement, September 24, 2015, Chet Nagle, a former CIA agent and current Vice President of M-CAM, penned an article in the Daily Caller, stating, “At FBI headquarters in July, the head of FBI counterintelligence, Randall Coleman, said there has been a 53 percent increase in the theft of American trade secrets, thefts that have cost hundreds of billions of dollars in the past year. In an FBI  survey of 165 private companies, half of them said they were victims of economic espionage or theft of trade secrets – 95 percent of those cases involved individuals associated with the Chinese government.” He blamed the corruption of Chinese government officials for the problem and stated that “President Xi Jinping has instituted a strict anti-corruption campaign. Regrettably, the campaign has focused on “tigers” – senior government officials – at the expense of eliminating the rampant corruption by the “flies” – officials at the provincial and local level. In any event, putting a dollar value on direct corruption does not address the totality of the costs. Business confidence and foreign direct investment in China are already falling because of the absence of the rule of law.” He concluded, “China’s disregard of the rule of law should be the underlying driver for all discussions of commercial topics during the coming visit of China’s president. Lack of the rule of law is the most difficult...

Jan 21, 2016

By Michele Nash-Hoff, Saving U.S. Manufacturing In December, two conflicting reports were released, one by A.T. Kearney and one by the Boston Consulting Group. The A. T. Kearney report states that reshoring may be “over before it began”, and the Boston Consulting Group report states that it is increasing. Why the difference in opinion and who is right? This was the second report by A. T. Kearney, in which their “U.S. Reshoring Index shows that, for the fourth consecutive year, reshoring of manufacturing activities to the United States has once again failed to keep up with offshoring. This time the index has dropped to -115, down from -30 in 2014, and it represents the largest year-over-year decrease in the past 10 years.” In fact, they conclude that “the rate of reshoring actually lagged that of offshoring between 2009 and 2013, as the growth of overall domestic U.S. manufacturing activity failed to keep pace with the import of offshore manufactured goods over the five-year period. The one exception was 2011.” The authors of the A. T. Kearney report identify the two main factors contributing to the drop in the reshoring index to be “lackluster domestic manufacturing growth and the resilience of the offshore manufacturing sector.” With regard to the lackluster domestic manufacturing, the report states that data from the U. S. Bureau of Economic Analysis predicted that U. S. manufacturing gross output would shrink by 3.6% through the end of 2015 based on data through November [December data not available.] On the other hand, the Boston Consulting Group survey results showed that “Thirty-one percent of respondents to BCG’s fourth annual survey of senior U.S.-based manufacturing executives at companies with at least $1 billion in annual revenues said that their companies are most likely to add production capacity in the U.S. within five years for goods sold in the U.S., while 20% said they are most likely to add capacity in China…The share of executives saying that their companies are actively reshoring production increased by 9% since 2014 and by about 250% since 2012. This suggests that companies that were considering reshoring in the past three years are now taking action. By a two-to-one margin, executives...