The State of Manufacturing: Leaders Must Resist Inertia, Adopt Culture of Data-Driven Technology

US manufacturing has been declared dead a half dozen times, but it endures - not by digging in its heels, but by adapting; and it has ensured its place by adapting to the digital age.

So described the Tuesday morning Manufacturing: State of the Industry panel at this' week's Microsoft Envision conference.

Patricia Panchak, Editor in Chief of Industry Week, acted as moderator and recounted manufacturing's durability. In the 1970s, Japan was supposed to become the world's manufacturing center. In the 1980s, the service sector was expected to overtake the manufacturing economy, in the 1990s the Internet was going to drive it under and after 2000 globalization would deliver the knockout blow. Instead, US manufacturers embraced Japanese methodologies of quality and service; embraced the Internet; and welcomed globalization and the new markets it created. With each new challenge, manufacturing has both adapted to and led the revolution.

The panel included manufacturing practitioners and theorists, including: 

• Gary Pisano, Professor of Business Administration Harvard Business School
• Jerry Jasinowski, Past President, National Association of Manufacturers, Founder and Past President of the Manufacturing Institute.
• Jerry Knoben, Corporate VP of Manufacturing, Microsoft
• Pierfrancisco Manenti, VP of Research, SCM World

New manufacturing includes services, and data is the "New Currency"

Jasinowski described what he calls "new manufacturing"-a hybrid of manufacturing and service, which traces its origins to quality guru J Edwards Deming, who conceived Total Quality Management (TQM). TQM led to ERP, which led to supply chain management (SCM) and customer relationship management (CRM), as well as "a whole beginning of a digital look at information associated with ...