"The United States stands on the cusp of a dramatic revival and rejuvenation propelled by an amazing wave of technological innovation," writes Stanford researcher Vivek Wadhwa in a recent editorial in The Washington Post. The basic notion behind Moore's Law-that technological progress can be enabled by exponentially accelerating technology, can be extended to all digitized domains.
Wadhwa predicts that advances in CAD "will reshape manufacturing forever," making it less wasteful. Big Data will help further to make manufacturing manufacturing as will crowd sourcing. In a similarly-themed article from last year, Wadhwa wrote that "[in the future drug development and medical device production will be personalized, cheap and fast."
Techniques that have been gaining steam in online such as A/B testing will be used to reshape R&D processes for product design. The same basic technology could be applied from everything to online advertising to artificial organ construction, he writes, enabling more thorough product testing at reduced costs. Also driving this trend will be brain-inspired self-learning computing platforms.
The editorial acknowledges the slow recovery to the Great Recession, which he terms the "Great Malaise" as well as the challenges of working with the current U.S. regulatory environment, which has spurred many life science firms to focus on Asia and Europe over the domestic market. Meanwhile, the aging population and exploding health costs are further hurdles.
Still, Wadhwa remains convinced that manufacturing will rebound in the United States:
The economies of scale that benefited cheap labor and cheap locations overseas will be stood on their head as the percentage of cost of manufacturing products consumed by labor continues to drop due to automation and mechanization. People will learn more, faster, more easily and with far more enjoyment. Healthcare costs will fall dramatically as the old doctor's office-centric and one-size-fits-many treatment approaches give way to personalized medicine. Connected hardware – cars, thermostats, cell phones, pacemakers, appliances, heating and cooling systems – will supply an endless stream of useful data that will allow us to optimize for efficiency and live more comfortable lives.
Not everyone, however, is convinced that the United States is experiencing, or will experience, a manufacturing renaissance. For instance, a piece in Forbes that ran late last year called reports of such a renaissance "a cruel political hoax." Penned by Eamonn Fingleton, the article points out that China and other countries will remain fiercely competitive in manufacturing for the foreseeable future.
The Economist is more upbeat, pointing out that U.S. manufacturing sector is faring well overall. The growth of the sector has occurred with a simultaneous dip in medium- and low-skill manufacturing jobs.
