The Evolution of Manufacturing

December 21, 2004 10:15 AM

The Evolution of Manufacturing is a collection of New York Times articles, providing a historical perspective on manufacturing operations in the U.S. The collection consists of 12 articles published between 1909 and 2000. It includes an article by Henry Ford himself, and an article by Thomas Edison based on his interview of Henry Ford. Interestingly, the collection is an advertisement for Peoplesoft.
posted by tuxster (6 comments total)

In order to be fair and balanced we should also have something about the creationism of manufacturing from Reverend Sun Yung Moon or Tim LaHaye.
posted by nofundy at 10:58 AM on December 21, 2004

heh. Before I clicked on comments I wondered if the sole comment listed was you correcting your mistake.

Also, I use PeopleSoft products at work to generate Adverse Impact reports.
posted by lyam at 10:59 AM on December 21, 2004

Actually, no I don't. I use peopleclick. n/m

I mean really. peoplesoft? we all know it's really about peopleclicking.
posted by lyam at 11:03 AM on December 21, 2004

PeopleSoft? Nah. PeopleCrunchy.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:17 AM on December 21, 2004

Betting against manufacturing isn't necessarily smart. Wilbur Ross has made a cool billion in the past few years betting that North American steel was undervalued. While there are certainly complicating global factors behind the rally in steel prices, he did demonstrate at least at one level that U.S. factories can still have a place.

I belive that the next 20 years are going to be very exciting ones for domestic manufacturing. Increasing transport and commodity costs, rising wages in China and India, and improvements in automation and miniaturization are going to create a tremendous opportunity for high tech U.S. manufacturing of low tech goods.

Wal-Mart won't be importing garments from Guangzhou when a $250k piece of equipment run by a $50k/year technician can be dropped in a spare 500 square feet of every distribution center and can transform raw fibers into every woven-apparel requirement of every store in the DC's zone on 24-hour's notice, on whatever pattern the designers in Paris (or, I suppose, Bentonville) dreamed up the night before and uploaded to the corporate network.
posted by MattD at 2:40 PM on December 21, 2004

Not too relevant in this thread but my now deceased father told me when he worked at the Rouge Plant, Henry Ford stopped at his work station and noted how my father had organized his clean-up rags well, complimented him and said he did the same thing and then shook his hand.
posted by JohnR at 6:51 PM on December 21, 2004