Chapter 6: Manufacturing Technologies
Recent Progress in Cleaning Up
It is difficult today
to imagine the levels of air pollution that were commonly accepted in the 1940s
and 1950s as the inevitable price of industrial progress. After a particularly
acute episode of air pollution in London in 1952 killed some 4,000 people,
scientists went to work to understand the sources of air pollution. Some of the
sources, such as coal-fired boilers, were readily identified. But
“smog” was more difficult. Atmospheric scientists eventually
determined that sunlight shining on exhaust from tailpipes and smokestacks
causes smog. Knowledge of the cause led environmental engineers to solutions
such as catalytic converters for automobiles and scrubbers for industrial
smokestacks. For example, today’s cars get twice the average gas mileage
of cars built in 1970, and they burn their gasoline 90 percent more cleanly.
Since 1970, air pollution has declined by 31 percent, while U.S. population
increased by 31 percent, GDP increased by 114 percent, and vehicle miles
traveled increased by 127 percent.
Just as science and technology led the way in improving air
quality, they have also given us new understanding, and new tools, in the
effort to clean up our water. The United States has 3.5 million miles of
rivers, 41 million acres of lakes, 277 million acres of wetlands, and 34,400
square miles of estuaries. During the past 25 years, we have seen substantial
improvements in water quality for many types of pollutants in the nation’s
aquatic cosystems, and anticipated advances in technology will help us address
remaining challenges. Among the issues needing attention are the declines in
populations of aquatic species that are not only environmentally essential but
also economically vital, and “non-point” sources of pollution —
that is, pollution that arises from wide areas — such as nitrogen and
phosphorus runoff from agricultural fields or oil and sediment from urban
development sites.
Standards that ensure that the nation’s public water
supplies remain safe for human consumption have helped prevent 200,000 to
470,000 cases of gastrointestinal illnesses each year. The Environmental
Protection Agency is also working with the states and other stakeholders to
develop long-term protection programs, an effort that has led to implementation
of special protection programs in about 4,000 communities across the
country.
Surveys of the nation’s largest rivers show that the number of
rivers, lakes, and estuaries safe enough for fishing and swimming has increased
by 20 percent. Clean water is essential not only for health reasons, but also
for direct economic benefit from fishing, tourism, and other water-based
commercial activities.
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Pollution Prevention Pays
A program at 3M to encourage innovation among employees
has not only helped the company improve speed and efficiency, but has also
helped create a cleaner environment and generate new revenues. The Pollution
Prevention Pays (3P) program at 3M aims to prevent waste at its source —
in products and manufacturing processes — rather than treating or
disposing of it after it has been created. Although the idea itself was not new
when 3P began in 1975, no one had ever tried to apply pollution prevention on a
company-wide basis and document the results. Since 1975, 3P has kept 771,000
tons of pollutants out of the environment and saved $810 million.
Before the 3P program, a resin spray booth in one plant
had annually produced about 500,000 pounds
of over-spray, requiring special
incineration disposal. The company installed new equipment to eliminate
excessive over-spray. It also implemented a new design that reduced the amount
of resin used. In this case, an equipment investment of $45,000 saved more than
$125,000 a year.
Another 3M plant developed a new product from the waste
stream of an existing product at the plant. The new product is used to contain
and absorb hazardous waste spills, providing revenue, cutting landfill costs,
and reducing waste. Other 3P projects worldwide have ranged from improved
control of coating weight and wastewater recycling, to a variety of combustion
control and heat-recovery processes.
The Federal investment in environmental research is
helping to encourage American corporations to develop manufacturing processes
to minimize pollution. |
Preventing Future Harm
The greater scientific
understanding of the environment has enabled us to shift from the initial
environmental focus of cleaning up major “point sources” of pollution
to a new generation of environmental tools that emphasizes pollution
prevention. Sustainability requires that future economic growth be achieved
without unacceptable levels of pollution or unsustainable rates of resource
use. And science is providing the analytic tools for policymakers and
decisionmakers to understand — in advance — the environmental
consequences of alternative management strategies. The technologies that help
us observe, compute, and communicate will increasingly allow us to anticipate
environmental issues in a much more timely fashion. For example, as we further
refine computer modeling, we will be better able to simulate interactions among
biological, chemical, and physical forces and phenomena to predict a range of
outcomes, providing better documentation for policy decisions.
Continuing a comprehensive program of environmental research and
development will improve our ability to prevent problems in the future. Federal
funding for environmental science provides the technical basis for sound
environmental policies that enable us to continue to create jobs and expand our
economy without sacrificing human health or healthy ecosystems on which human
prosperity ultimately depends.
Manufacturing undergirds our nation’s economy.
Manufacturing firms consistently generate about 20 percent of GDP and employ
about 16 percent of the total workforce, or about 21 million people. Continual
innovations in manufacturing technologies sustain the vital economic role of
manufacturing industries in the U.S. economy.
Three decades ago, U.S. manufacturing was concentrated in large
factories using large amounts of raw materials to produce machinery, automotive
vehicles, and other large products. Labor was skilled but relatively expensive
to the manufacturer, who often had to tread a fine line between cost and
quality concerns.
Today’s manufacturing model is a much smaller
factory producing smaller consumer goods or precision parts for later assembly
in larger products. Miniaturization, new materials, and improved processes have
helped manufacturers make great strides in quality, efficiency, and
productivity. This rapid rate of progress is fueled by research in
manufacturing systems, as well as innovations in a range of other disciplines
— including materials science, robotics, chemistry, information
technologies, management, and statistics.
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Virtual Manufacturing
Our ability to harness the power and promise of
leading-edge advances in technology will determine in large measure our
national prosperity, security, and global influence, and with them the standard
of living and quality of life of our people.
Designing, testing, and developing large manufactured
products requires many human and material resources. Information technologies
help integrate computer design tools with models and simulations of
manufacturing processes for more efficient design, analysis, and testing of
products. These ‘virtual’ tools greatly reduce the investment
required for product prototyping, testing, and validation. The story of the
development and production of the Boeing 777 is a vivid illustration of the
adoption of virtual manufacturing and the efficiencies that technology can
create.
The latest relative in Boeing’s family of
jetliners, the 777 is the first airplane to be completely designed and
pre-assembled ‘virtually’ — that is, by computer. Performance
and strength of the plane were analyzed and tested through complex computer
models. Of its three million parts, more than 100,000 are unique; they were
precision-engineered from computer models. The parts were manufactured
separately at sites spread around the world, then shipped to a central plant,
where they were assembled. They fit together perfectly on the first attempt!
The cost savings to Boeing were tremendous, and the company won multiple
manufacturing and innovation awards. |
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Customizing Mass Production
Next generation vehicles such as this one will
incorporate advances in manufacturing and information technologies.
U.S. manufacturing firms are adopting techniques that
are potentially as revolutionary as Henry Ford’s development of the Model
T automobile. The mass-produced auto epitomized the industrial revolution; the
assembly line standardized quality, reduced costs, and passed on these benefits
to the consumer. But the consumer also had to accept fewer choices — most
famously, every Model T was painted black.
Today, the advent of information technology is changing
the nature of manufacturing and raising consumer expectations. In a world where
we have grown accustomed to instant Internet access to specific information on
almost any topic, we increasingly expect products to be tailored to our
individual needs. Already, customers are using the World Wide Web to configure
their dream car or their next computer. With a click, their order goes directly
to the manufacturing plant.
Even more sweeping are IT-enabled changes in
manufacturing practices and business relationships. Supply chains span the
globe, linked in information-sharing networks that rapidly exchange designs,
part orders, demand forecasts, sales reports, and much, much more. Without
leaving their home offices, equipment manufacturers can go on line to
troubleshoot — and even correct — problems in a customer’s plant
hundreds of miles away, saving time and money. A small manufacturer with
occasional need for a costly design or research tool can contract, via the
Internet, with a specialized service provider, bringing the company the benefit
of unique expertise without having to hire new staff. And, in the steel
industry, companies are trimming storage costs by advertising and selling
surplus production via their Web sites.
Some companies already are making customized products on
production lines that are only a link or two away from the customer. Dell
Computer Corporation, for example, uses a computerized ystem that informs
workers which components to install, according to customer specifications on
orders received on the company’s Web site. The system automatically
reorders components according to demand, a practice that reduces surplus
inventory and prevents volatile components from losing value (up to 1 percent
per week). This system works well for building computers, whose parts can be
configured in many different ways according to customers’ needs, but many
other industries also use the technology. In the apparel industry, some
companies are scaling production runs to orders as small as one item. Their
customers supply measurements over the Internet, and the firms send back attire
that truly is made to fit.
Economists credit applications of information technology
for driving annual productivity increases in manufacturing that have been
averaging about 4 percent since 1992, double the rate of increase for other
non-farm sectors of the economy. Manufacturers are still finding new,
productive uses of information technology. In the decades to come, information
technology will bring the Industrial Revolution full circle, and mass-produced
customized products will become the norm. |
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Small Component, Big Impact
The health of the U.S. printed wiring board industry has
improved dramatically in the past several years, thanks to a collaborative
research venture co-funded by the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) of the
Department of Commerce.
Printed wiring boards are a powerful but unseen
component of our modern Information Age — in fact, most people have never
seen one. Nonetheless, they are crucial in the operation of dozens of products
we use every day, from copy machines, pagers, and computers to radar,
industrial sensors, and biomedical implants. These wiring boards connect
smaller electronic devices inside the products. Between the early 1980s and the
early 1990s, the $7 billion industry, which represents some 200,000 American
jobs, was steadily losing world market share. Then the ATP partnered with six
top U.S. suppliers and users of printed wiring boards and Sandia National
Laboratories of the U.S. Department of Energy to look for ways to improve the
industry’s manufacturing efficiency.
Between mid-1991 and mid-1996, the venture hastened
progress and substantially reduced the costs of 32 research tasks and enabled
the industry to pursue 30 other tasks that would not have been possible without
ATP funding. The initial gains in productivity were remarkable: one company
reduced the number of plies, or layers of material, in its wiring boards,
saving more than $3 million annually; another company used a new model for
predicting shrinkage of its wiring boards’ layers, reducing its
accumulation of scrap and saving more than $1.4 million per year; and a third
firm found ways to improve its coating and soldering techniques, reducing
solder joint defects by 50 percent. The venture succeeded not only through
technical accomplishments but also through spin-off projects that may further
boost the industry’s fortunes — especially in the dynamic market for
portable electronics. One group of engineers involved in the project started a
new company that now tests sample boards for major corporate clients around the
world.
The industry saved a total of $35.5 million in research
costs, and millions more via increased productivity. One expert credits the ATP
program with saving the entire U.S. industry. The U.S. share of the market for
printed wiring boards has increased from a low of 26 percent in the early 1990s
to 31 percent in 1996, and orders were up nearly 20 percent as of mid-1997.
Ultimately, the biggest beneficiaries of the reduced costs and improved quality
in these products are American consumers. |
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