Читать книгу Exploring Advanced Manufacturing Technologies - Steve Krar - Страница 11
ОглавлениеManufacturing Technology’s Unmeasured Role in Economic Expansion
(Reprinted by Permission of AMT – The Association of Manufacturing Technology – Sept. 2000)
Traditional economic measures of productivity alone do not reveal the full extent of economic benefits contributed by machine tools and related advanced manufacturing techniques. The unmeasured contributions averaged nearly $200 billion per year during the past five years a total of nearly $1 trillion. This represents savings in just two product examples as well as labor productivity improvements in the eight industries that are the most intensive users of machine tools. The measure of economic benefits would be even larger if other products and industries were included in the analysis.
The basis for this conclusion is the Sept. 2000 study by Joel Popkin and Company, Washington, D.C. based economic consultants. It reveals the substantial benefits generated by advanced manufacturing technologies and their positive effect on productivity, an outcome reflecting the blending of new, high productivity machine tool technology with the benefits of information technology based manufacturing processes.
Traditional measures of productivity alone do not reveal the full extent of manufacturing’s true contributions to the growing U.S. economy masking the full potential for continued strong economic growth without inflation. Manufacturing technology, through its application in various types of capital equipment, played a major role in the country’s remarkable economic growth of the 1990s, this analysis of official economic data shows.
Why has manufacturing’s contribution to the nation’s prosperity largely gone unrecognized? Economists believe the main reason that its role has not been fully credited is because of the diverse mix of technological advances in manufacturing and the difficulty of quantifying their total economic benefits.
Yet these contributions to economic growth rival those of computers and information technology. Estimates by Federal Reserve Board economists attribute no more than one half of the recent upswing in productivity to computers and information technology. Thus other forms of improvement deserve a large part of the credit for the upswing in productivity that has given the nation a decade of uninterrupted growth.
Beneficiaries of these understated advances have included nearly everyone:
▪Manufacturers, who make higher quality products faster and at lower cost.
▪Consumers, who pay less for higher quality goods that perform better and last longer.
▪Workers in the manufacturing sector, who acquire new skills and earn higher real wages.
▪The economy, because the U.S. is competitive and inflation stays in check.
PRODUCTIVITY MAKES THE DIFFERENCE
Productivity in durable goods manufacturing is one of the economy’s main drivers. From 1959 to 1996, economy wide multifactor productivity (MFP) the most fundamental measure of productivity that considers factors beyond capital and labor grew at an annual average rate of 0.8 percent for the nonfarm economy, while manufacturing MFP grew considerably faster, at 1.1 percent. Chart 1.2* shows that the durable goods sector accounted for virtually all of the MFP growth in manufacturing during the period from 1971 to 1996, as nondurable MFP was flat during that time. During the 1980s and 1990s, durable goods manufacturing achieved exceptional MFP gains, averaging 4.2 percent annually between 1992 and 1996.
Labor productivity shows a relationship similar to that above. The private, nonfarm economy experienced a distinct slowdown in labor productivity in 1973, and proceeded at that slow pace through most of the l990s. Labor productivity in manufacturing, while also growing at a constant pace until the mid 1990s, accelerated sharply beginning in 1993. Chart 1.4 traces gains in manufacturing output per labor hour to durable goods industries, especially during the 1990s.
*Chart and table numbering conforms to designations used in the main study.
These gains in manufacturing productivity have resulted in enormous benefits.
▪Rapid gains in labor productivity in the durable goods sector generated an additional $618 billion of output (in 1996 dollars) over the 1992–98 period.
▪These same producers also saved $25.3 billion in carrying costs between 1992 and 1997 thanks to a decline in inventory requirements per dollar of sales, attributable to advanced manufacturing processes. This in turn freed up billions of dollars in capital for additional investment.
▪Eight key industries auto parts, aircraft engines and parts, engines and turbines, metal foundries, fabricated structural metal, other industrial machinery, construction and mining equipment, and farm and garden machinery saved a combined total of $24.3 billion in payroll costs in 1997 and $80 billion over the six year period 1992–1997.
▪Consumers realized an actual decline of just over $100 billion in the cost of durable goods from 1996 to 1999.
▪Consumers also saved billions from product quality improvements such as cars with higher fuel efficiency ($50 billion in 1999), reduced maintenance needs ($21 billion in 1998), and savings from lower electricity bills for energy efficient refrigerators and air conditioners ($19.6 billion in 1997).
MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES
America is back as a manufacturing powerhouse.
Manufacturing today is complex, competitive, and quality conscious. Consumer demand for mass customization has replaced the earlier “one size fits all” notion of mass production. Manufacturers are now driven by a “faster, better, cheaper” mantra.
To deliver what customers want, manufacturers have reinvented themselves, finding new ways of doing things and reevaluating every aspect of production to improve productivity. To respond to this demand, machine tool makers have instituted changes to enhance productivity and competitiveness in a variety of industries including automobiles, refrigeration, heating and air conditioning, aerospace, construction and mining equipment, and farm and garden machinery (See Table 2.1).
Machine tools have also become increasingly tied to information technologies to form a combined system of manufacturing that produces goods more quickly and with greater accuracy than before. Among the most important advances has been the change from manual control of the machine tool’s movements to numeric control and computer numerical control. This has fostered new uses for machine tools. Five axis machine tools are now widely used, not only in the defense industry but also in civilian applications. The ability to produce complex geometric patterns more quickly and accurately, without using templates, has increased the number of items for which the use of machine tools is practical.
During the last two decades, a revolution in manufacturing technology generally and advances in machine tools specifically enabled manufacturers to reinvent themselves and to restore the competitive power of the United States as a world class producer of durable goods.
There has also been a marked increase in the use of computing power and automation in machine tools, such as the ability to read computer aided design math models into the machine to determine its movements. The aircraft industry provides a good example of how advances in machine tool technology have improved the manufacturing process. In one dramatic example, an aerospace company [McDonnell Douglas] changed the manufacturing process for landing gear bulk heads of the C 17 aircraft to take advantage of high speed machining. Under the new process, bulkheads are made with two parts, rather than 72, and require only 35 fasteners to hold them together, rather than 1,720 under the previous method. Furthermore, machining was completed 15 times faster.
BENEFITS OF QUALITY IMPROVEMENTS TO CONSUMERS
Advances in machine tool technologies have made it possible to improve quality dramatically and build better, longer lasting products at lower prices. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) documents these improvements. Between 1982 and 1999, the overall CPI increased by 73 percent, or at an annual average rate of 3.3 percent. Over the same period, the price index for durable goods increased by only 35 percent, or an annual average of only 1.8 percent. More striking still, the price of durable goods actually declined between 1996 and 1999, saving consumers approximately $101.3 billion.
Table 2.1: Improvements in Machine Tool Technology Since the 1970s
Increased accuracy due to
▪Thermal effect compensation
▪Geometric compensation through CNC
▪Real-time compensation for tool wear
▪Dynamic compensation for die-height (for effects of thermal and speed vaiations)
Improved operations due to more capable CNC:
▪Download of instructions rather than tape
▪Remote diagnostics
▪Visual representation of cycle progress at the machine
▪More accurate contouring
▪Programming at CNC machine
▪Automatic die changes
Improvements in components of machines
▪Switch from hydraulic drives to electric drives
▪Linear Drives
▪Higher spindle speeds
▪Variable spindle speed used in conjunction with electric drives
▪Faster die changes and automatice bolster/die changers
Improved tool materials provide longer tool life and allow more demanding machining:
▪Coated carbides
▪Cubic Boron Nitride (CBN) Grinding wheels
▪Ceramic tools
Increased capabilities of machining centers:
▪Greater tool storage
▪Ability to handle more pallets
▪Live tool stations on turning centers
Multiple operations performed with a single machine set-up
Combining processes in one machine: mill, turn, grind
High-speed presses
Wire electro-discharge machining
Waterjet machining
Laser machining
Flexible manufacturing systems (an arrangement of machines interconnected with a transport system and both being controlled by a computer system)
Programmable logic controllers
Stereolithography ( a rapid prototyping process whereby a 3-D object is created using cross-sectional data from a computer-aided design file and “printing” it with a solid-object printer)
Improving handling of parts:
▪Robotics and handling of parts of rotation
▪Automatic loading and unloading of parts from presses
Automobiles illustrate this trend. Consumers spend more on cars and light trucks than any other durable good. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, vehicle quality between 1967 and 1998 increased at an annual average rate of 2.2 percent. This means that a car built in 1998 has twice the quality as one built in 1967 in terms of per formance, reliability, durability, and warranty. Today, owners of new cars produced by U.S. companies experience fewer than 30 problems per 100 cars during the first year of ownership, compared with 104 per 100 cars in 1980.
Higher quality means fewer repairs and longer useful life (Table 4.2). Car maintenance costs dropped 28 percent between 1985 and 1998, translating into a sav ings of $21 billion in 1998 alone. As a result of higher quality, the median age of cars in operation today is over eight years, compared with 6.5 years in 1990 and less than five years in 1980. Yet the average mileage traveled by cars increased from 9,500 miles a year in 1985 to over 11,000 miles today (Chart 4.3).
Advances in manufacturing technology and machine tools have also delivered savings to consumers through major improvements in the fuel efficiency of cars and light trucks during the last 15 years. Today’s passenger vehicles are more powerful and more economical than those of 25 years ago, and they are saving consumers tens of billions of dollars annually in fuel costs alone.
The story of the automobile industry is no fluke. Similar quality improvements and dollar savings are seen in other durable consumer goods. For example, new, more precise and flexible machine tools have enabled the manufacture of the scroll compressor, making it possible to increase the energy efficiency rating of air conditioners and heat pumps nearly 40 percent since 1981; the energy rating of refrigerators jumped 100 percent during the same period. These improvements saved consumers nearly $20 billion in electricity costs during 1997 alone (Chart 4.11).
MACROECONOMIC BENEFITS
In addition to the many machine tool advances that have enabled manufacturers in various industries to produce better products faster and cheaper, improvements in manufacturing technology have also delivered important gains to the economy as a whole in at least four major areas.
First, and of greatest significance, the dramatic turnaround in manufacturing helped fuel America’s economic expansion during the 1990s. After accounting for inflation, the average annual rate of growth of real GDP in durable goods industries between 1992 and 1997 was a remarkable 7.6 percent, more than twice the rate for the overall private economy. During the decade from 1987 to 1997, durable manufacturing grew at a 4.0 percent average annual rate, still significantly higher than the private economy as a whole. And according to the Congressional Research Service, increases in manufacturing output have more than twice the downstream impact on the economy as output increases in other sectors of the private economy such as services.
Second, advances in manufacturing technology have improved the quality and prosperity of the workforce by making it necessary for employers to provide workers with more training. Training is often needed because although today’s machine tools are simpler to operate, the tasks they perform are more complex. Workers who improve their skills through training qualify for higher wages and improve their living standards while enhancing manufacturing productivity.
A third heretofore unappreciated benefit of the improvements in manufacturing technology has been to reduce the peaks and valleys of the U.S. business cycle by reducing inventory fluctuations. Better machine tools have helped to shorten process times and aided Just In Time inventory management procedures. In the past, inventory fluctuations have often triggered economic recessions.
Finally, manufacturing improvements have again made the U.S. a powerhouse in the global marketplace. After bottoming out in the early 1980s, the quantity of manufactured goods exported from the U.S. grew at nearly 12 percent annually between 1986 and 1992, while those of leading global competitors lagged. German exports of manufactured goods grew at only 4 percent, for example, and Japan’s grew at just 3.5 percent. Over the 10 year period from 1986 to 1996, U.S. exports of manufactured products grew at an average annual rate of 10 percent, while those from Germany and Japan averaged a mere 4 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The dividends to the U.S. economy created by advances in manufacturing technology are not captured by productivity measures alone. There are other important ways in which the restructuring of the nation’s manufacturing capabilities have generated significant economic benefits for producers of durable goods, the consumers who buy their products, and the U.S. economy as a whole.
Thus, policies that promote and support continued capital investment, the development of advanced manufacturing technologies, and the continuing advancement of education and skill training for the American worker should be a priority at all levels of government.
Specific public policy initiatives have been developed and are to be published separately. Among the highlights are:
▪Keeping interest rates stable so as not to discourage continued investment.
▪Stimulating more investment by allowing investments in productive equipment to be written off at the time the expenditure is made.
▪Supporting research & development by extending the R&D tax credit on a permanent basis and increasing the budget for the National Science Foundation and other technology oriented programs.
▪Improving the trade environment by adopting a territorial and border adjustable tax system, increasing resources for trade promotion agencies including the Export/Import Bank, eliminating unilateral U.S. export controls, vigorously enforcing U.S. Fair Trade laws, strengthening dispute resolution within the World Trade Organization, and working to open foreign markets to U.S. products.
▪Assuring that exchange rates reflect international as well as domestic economic conditions to provide fair trading relationships.
▪Adopting fair and balanced legal and regulatory reforms.
These policies will, AMT believes, help extend prosperity in the United States in a manner that will provide the maximum opportunity for manufacturing and other industries to participate in the expansion.
The study was sponsored by AMT The Association For Manufacturing Technology, the trade association for American producers of machine tools and manufacturing technology equipment. For additional copies contact AMT at 703 893 2900. E mail: amt@mfgtech.org.
Fig. 1-1-1
The Law of Production
What Everyone Should Know About Economics
The following sets of facts, developed by The American Economic Foundation, are called the “Ten Pillars of Economic Wisdom.” These basic laws of economics might be called a blueprint for man’s economic life. These simple truths should clear up the hostility that has been generated between economic groups by people who want to benefit by that hostility.
These ten rules show how simply the economic truth can be told:
1.NOTHING IN OUR MATERIAL WORLD can come from nowhere or go nowhere, nor can it be free. Everything in our economic life has a source, a destination, and a cost that must be paid.
2.GOVERNMENT IS NEVER A SOURCE OF GOODS. Everything produced is produced by the people, and everything that government gives to the people, it must first take from the people.
3.THE ONLY VALUABLE MONEY that government has to spend is that money taxed or borrowed out of the people’s earnings. When government decides to spend more than it has thus received, that extra unearned money is created out of thin air, through the banks, and, when spent, takes on value only by reducing the value of all money, savings, and insurance.
4.IN OUR MODERN EXCHANGE ECONOMY, all payroll and employment come from customers, and the only worthwhile job security is customer security; if there are no customers, there can be no payroll and no jobs.
5.CUSTOMER SECURITY can be achieved by workers only when they cooperate with management in doing the things that win and hold customers. Job security, therefore, is a partnership problem that can be solved only in a spirit of understanding and cooperation.
6.BECAUSE WAGES ARE THE PRINCIPAL COST of everything, widespread wage increases, without corresponding increases in production, simply increase the cost of everybody’s living.
7.THE GREATEST GOOD FOR THE GREATEST NUMBER means, in its material sense, the greatest goods for the greatest number that, in turn, means the greatest productivity per worker.
8.ALL PRODUCTIVITY IS BASED on three factors: 1) natural resources, whose form, place, and condition are changed by the expenditure of 2) human energy (both muscular and mental), with the aid of 3) tools.
9.TOOLS ARE THE ONLY ONE of these three factors that people can increase without limit. Tools come into being in a free society only when there is a reward for the temporary self-denial that people must practice in order to channel part of their earnings away from purchases that produce immediate comfort and pleasure, and into new tools of production. Proper payment for the use of tools is essential to their creation.
10.THE PRODUCTIVITY OF THE TOOLS - that is, the efficiency of the human energy applied in connection with their use - has always been highest in a competitive society in which the economic decisions are made by millions of progress-seeking individuals, rather than in a state-planned society in which those decisions are made by a handful of all-powerful people, regardless of how well-meaning, unselfish, sincere, and intelligent those people may be.
For more information on PRODUCING PROSPERITY see the Website: www.mfgtech.org.
