The U.S. used to be a powerhouse in manufacturing. In the past quarter of a century we have relinquished this leadership position, in large part because we made a decision—consciously or unconsciously—that the service and financial sectors are sufficient to sustain our economy. But they are not. Service jobs pay little. The financial industry makes nothing of value and therefore cannot maintain, let alone raise, the nation’s standard of living.
The fate of manufacturing is in some ways linked to our prowess in the physical sciences. In the 1960s and 1970s high-performance computing (HPC) developed at the national labs made its way to the manufacturing sector, where it now powers much of the innovation behind our most successful commercial firms. Yet we are ceding leadership in the physical sciences, too. Canceling the Superconducting Super Collider in the 1990s ended U.S. dominance in particle physics. NASA’s decision to delay, and possibly eventually abandon, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope could do the same for cosmology.
Fortunately, the nation’s lead in high-performance computing still stands. HPC is the advanced computing physicists use to model the dynamics of black holes, meteorologists use to model weather and engineers use to simulate combustion. This expertise may also be our best chance to rescue U.S. manufacturing. If we can successfully deliver it to engineers at small firms, it might give the sector enough of a boost to compete with lower labor costs overseas.
We already know how useful HPC is for big firms. When Boeing made the 767 in the 1980s, it tested 77 wing prototypes in the wind tunnel. When it made the 787 in 2005, it tested only 11. In the future, Boeing plans to bring that number down to three. Instead of physical wind tunnels, it uses virtual ones—simulations run on supercomputers—saving much time and money and quickening the pace of new products development. HPC modeling and simulation has become an equally powerful tool in designing assembly lines and manufacturing processes in a broad range of fields—big manufacturers such as Caterpillar, General Electric, Goodyear and Procter & Gamble use it routinely. Small manufacturers could get similar benefits from these tools, if only they had access to them.
I first came to appreciate the potential of HPC to help small manufacturers in 2009 as part of the Obama transition team. Working with the Council on Competitiveness, we identified lack of software, cost of entry and shortages of expertise as the main obstacles to the use of HPC by small manufacturers and proposed a partnership among government, manufacturers and universities to help. The result is the National Digital Engineering and Manufacturing Consortium, or NDEMC, a pilot program created by the council and the federal government.
Recently NDEMC made HPC resources available to a handful of firms, including Jeco Plastic Products. This 25-employee firm in Plainfield, Ind., makes plastic pallets for packaging of auto parts. The plastic pallets are a less expensive alternative to steel pallets, which are heavier and prone to rusting. When Jeco makes a new product, its engineers build a prototype, test it in the lab to see how it bears up under the stress it is likely to encounter in the field and repeat the process until they arrive at the best design. Last December, however, Jeco engineers got a chance to tap expertise at Purdue University to develop simulations of a pallet designed for a German automotive company and ran them on hardware at the Ohio Supercomputing Center in Columbus. As a result, Jeco bypassed that trial-and-error process completely, arriving at a design in only a few hours of computer time.
Many other small firms could reap similar benefits. NDEMC’s goal is to find the best business models for getting HPC to these firms and eventually take the effort nationwide. Small manufacturers today are in some ways like farmers at the beginning of the 20th century, most of whom did not know what contour farming, crop rotation and fertilizers could do for productivity. When the U.S. agricultural extension service, in conjunction with land-grant universities, made the requisite expertise available, it triggered a revolution in agricultural productivity. A similar revolution could be in the cards for small manufacturers if we can get supercomputing technology into the hands of their engineers.
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13 Comments
Add CommentComputer simulation is indeed essential in modern manufacturing. The use of numerical analysis tool such as Finite Element Analysis or Computational Fluid Dynamics allows designers to speed up design process by replacing physical prototypes by numerical models.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisComputational power is certainly important for specific applications, but supercomputers are no longer required for vast majority of simulation projects conducted in support of design and manufacturing. The imbedded design analysis systems have expanded their capabilities to the point where design engineers may perform advanced analyses themselves using low cost desktop computers. The most important factor is education and training to make sure that those easily accessible and inexpensive simulation tools are used correctly.
Paul Kurowski
Assistant Professor
The University of Western Ontario
The United States is still the largest manufacturing country in the world according to the most recent statistics I could find, a quick Google search would tell you that. The US produced 21% of all world goods compared to 15% from China and while that gap is closing, that is hardly the same thing as the US doesn't make anything. So what's to save? It's true that the US has shed a lot of manufacturing jobs and that is what most people point to when saying that manufacturing is going away, but how will supercomputers change that? Computers and automation are the reason so few people are now needed to produce so much. I'm really missing the point of the article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFEA, heat analysis and other analytical software is already available in the mid range CAD software packages that run on desktop computers. This brings high end analysis to small and large design shops at a relatively small cost. And it hasn't cost the taxpayers a dime. And some of this same software is available to universities at little or no cost.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDesktops may not be supercomputers but one doesn't need a supercomputer to run an analysis of a pallet whether it be plastic or steel.
China Passes The US As Largest Manufacturer:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://247wallst.com/2011/03/14/china-passes-the-us-as-largest-manufacturer/
If we recognize that efficiency negates the need for full employment, we could be free to contribute or relax.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-I imagine a cooperative national and world MRP (material requirement planning) controlling the inventories and flow of goods.
-I imagine a need database replacing want ads where we could find their niche.
-I imagine a big battery backup system.
-I imagine a parallel non-electrical backup system.
RDH...agreed. most manufacturing is not super high tech but rather mundane nuts and bolts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso,a physical machine can be moved from the UK to Indonesia.'''or from the USA to China. A computer and software is even much easier to move.
Manufacturing creates innovations and thinking processes that result from problem solving. The day a nation decides to give up its manufacturing, is they day it gives up creative thinking. Don't mix money with this concept.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have been watching the British series Empire. They wanted gold, diamonds, pearls and other symbols of wealth, not true wealth. In exchange they built cities, railways, roads, canals, legal systems, schools, universities, manufacturing facilities, mapped their empire and set in place all the infrastructure a modern nation needed. They gave more than they ever got, in fact they gave wealth and took trinkets in exchange. If you laugh at foolish native Indians giving-away furs and other valuable stuff for glass beads,then you ought to laugh at the British too.
The mental stimulation and creative instincts generated by manufacturing is now lost to the developed world. Their current populations cannot wire up a plug or change a fuse, if they have one; its all energy consuming trip switches now. Back to silly gods we go, no one ever questioning where god came from.
The economy could easily crash as a result of an unpredictable event. That event will likely be a super poison. The poison will occur due to a flawed risk assessment and faulty reaction....so they say .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSaying that "the financial industry makes nothing of value and therefore cannot maintain, let alone raise, the nation’s standard of living" is just plain wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFinancial institutions provide payment services. They mobilize savings by matching many small deposits with large loans (size transformation). Short-term liabilities are transformed into long term assets (maturity transformation). Lots of computational- and manpower goes into analyzing and monitoring credit risk, liqudidity risk, market risk and operational risk. Speaking of market risk, think of companies who hedge their commodity risk, foreign exchange risk or interest risk. Speaking of companies investment banking (underwriting/bond issuance, M&A, ...) comes to mind. And so on...
Yes, lots of things went terribly wrong in the past but that does not mean that the financial industry doesn't raise the standard of living in the long-term. (There are actually lots of academic papers out there that analyze the nexus between financial intermediation and economic growth). Since many parts of banking actually require lots of knowledge and a high skilled work-force it is actually a service that can be exported ($$$). Maybe knowing that most of the bank employees are hard working never see fat bonuses helps a bit changing your mind...
Michael, Vienna, Austria
Michael, what you say is true and it actually made possible the rise of the British Empire that another poster referred to.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, it is only a means to an end, on the same footing as R&D and Super Computers. You cannot eat money, dress with money, shelter with money. Of course you can use the money to pay for the goods that the industry, artisans and farmers provide but without them, money is useless and so is the banking industry.
I have written a text sorting program which is hundreds of times faster than quicksort when using its unique system of massively compressed text. It can store gigabytes of words in 128Mo of RAM. It can only sort four-letter words on a 32 bit PC, so needs to be adapted to run on a supercomputer for bigger words. If anyone would like to take up the project, the code is printed in QUANTA magazine of febuary 2012, editor@quanta.org.uk
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut all the real value generated in the banking industry is derivative of and smaller than the value generated in other industries benefiting from the flow of money banks enable. That is the point. If there is no other industry, banks generate no value. If there is only little other industry, banks generate very little value.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe catalyze is a better word than generate. Banks are useful in enabling other industries, but can not possibly produce anything of value on their own. That lies in the nature of banks and no academic paper can change it without adopting a definition of value which ignores any understanding of the concept of money.
Great blog , thanks for the post!
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