Taking stock of the stock market
August 17, 2007

1. Taking stock: The housing downturn and the mortgage crisis has put the stock market in a tailspin, and it’s affecting economic outlooks throughout the manufacturing sector. The quarterly report from Manufacturer’s Alliance/MAPI shows GDP growth dropping from 3.3% in 2006 to 1.9% in 2007. The report calls this economy “slowing” which is an optimistic term, because  “cutting in half” sounds much worse. Daniel J. Meckstroth, Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI’s chief economist said, “The housing collapse is worse than we thought and will reduce GDP growth next year.  Manufacturing is buttressed, however, by somewhat better prospects in the trade sector.  Exports are expected to perform well in relation to imports and moderately reduce the trade deficit.” All this assumes the rest of the word doesn’t get the same jitters as Wall Street – and there’s no evidence of that right now.

2. Quality is job… what? You’d think we’d understand the idea that quality matters in manufacturing. Ford went so far as to declare more than a decade ago that, “Quality is Job 1.” A new study from Aberdeen Research indicates not everyone ranks quality nearly that high. “Without executive leadership sponsoring coordinated enterprise-wide quality management programs, many manufacturers ended up making due with disjointed quality processes that left both regulators and customers wanting,” the report notes. A look at Aberdeen’s full report is here, but if you’re looking for a quick way to improve the numbers at your plant, don’t just download a report on improving quality – implement it.

3. Continuing improvement: One hot term out there now is enterprise resource planning, shortened to the catchy, burp-like acronym ERP. It essentially means putting all of your data in one basket, and then running your operation based on that shared database. It’s designed to help the enterprise level, of course, but the benefits to the plant floor are profound. Another Aberdeen study looked at 1,400 manufacturers for ways ERP can be used to drive lower costs and better inventory and schedule planning.

4. Once you’re in JETS, you’re in JETS all the way: As I’ve noted repeatedly, the future of manufacturing is in our schools today, and we need to do a better job of opening our doors to our community to let them know what manufacturing has to offer. One longstanding program in the high schools that celebrates the kind of manufacturing innovation we’ll need from our young people is the Junior Engineering Technical Society. The JETS’ annual Tests of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics and Science (TEAMS) competition will be Oct. 25-26 in Teaneck, NJ. Once each year in 90 locations throughout the country, JETS coordinates a day-long competition where high school students gather in small teams at colleges and universities to tackle engineering challenges. More than 14,000 students from 650 high schools participated in the TEAMS competition in 2007. In 2008, the TEAMS challenge will take on an Olympic theme to look at the engineering involved in putting on a large-scale athletic event, studying issues from facilities design to logistics. Shell Oil is sponsoring a t-shirt design contest to bring this ‘behind-the-scenes’ look at the Olympics into focus for the students. “Encouraging a broad range of students in high school to study math and science is critical to the future of the energy industry,” said Shell Oil president John D. Hofmeister. “Developing these skills early will help prepare students for a future career in a technology-driven field.” We’ll keep banging away at that message here, but something you can do right now is find out if your local high school has a JETS program. If they do, sponsor it. If they don’t, sponsor it.

5. And with the football season upon us… In my wild, misspent youth (which isn’t quite over yet) I covered a lot of football for local newspapers. I’ve seen just about everything on the football field you can imagine. This remains the greatest three minutes of football I've ever seen. At a time when indictments and drugs and other off-field mischief take our attention away from the game, it’s a great reminder of what sports can be.

Posted by Wolseley on August 17, 2007 | Comments (2)