Experts Chime in on the Future of Global Manufacturing 

In the wake of the economic downturn, reshoring efforts and increased emphasis on STEM, there’s plenty of uncertainty about where global manufacturing is headed in the next several years.  Helping to give us a better sense of this trajectory is a group of industry, academic, and other thought leaders who have come together to try and answer the most pertinent questions about the future.

One of the biggest trends throughout their comments was that of robotics.  The majority of these thought-leaders believe that within the next 5 years robots will play a huge role in manufacturing.  Rosabeth Moss Kanter, who holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle professorship at Harvard Business School, discussed how there would be more robots and fewer people on factory floors in the future. There will still be people there, but she said they will just be analysts working with data from digital devices. 

Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the policy director of the Metropolitan Policy Program, had a similar viewpoint.  He said that manufacturing would increasingly become a scientific and research enterprise, and that production would become more high-tech, with robots and flexible-manufacturing techniques replacing floor workers.

Bruce Nolop, the former chief financial officer of Pitney Bowes Inc. and E*Trade Financial Corp. also believes that we will see fewer workers, while Cesare Mainardi, the chief executive officer of global management consulting firm Booz & Co, thinks that Workers will need to know how to program and operate a robot instead of a drill. He anticipates that manufacturing will become super-automated and highly digitized. Nolop also said that real-time reporting, robotics, soft-tooling, and 3D printing will revolutionize assembly lines, shrink factory scale, and change the face of the workforce.

Another big trend was that of outsourcing.  Those who spoke on the topic believe that there will, in fact, be less outsourcing in the future, spelling good news for proponents of reshoring. 

Kate Gordon, the vice president and director of the energy and climate program at Next Generation, stated, “As manufacturing processes become more advanced and complex, there's every reason to think they'll be more likely to be located domestically instead of offshored and outsourced. Advanced manufacturing requires highly skilled workers, who tend to be those with more advanced education.  That means that countries like the U.S., with higher-skilled workers who command higher wages, may actually be at an advantage as manufacturing becomes more complex.”  Because of this, Gordon believes that advanced manufacturing is more likely to locate near centers of innovation, instead of being outsourced to far-off countries.

For the full article and more views on what they think is to come, please visit The Wall Street Journal.