Politicians talk a lot about how their policies will help the economy by creating “good” manufacturing jobs, and everybody nods as though the way forward is ever more people marching in the factory door when the whistle blows to start the shift — wrong.
Manufacturing is a big part of what made America great, but let’s not confuse the Rockwellian image of 1950s middle class nirvana with the reality that awaits a rebranded manufacturing sector suited to the needs and possibilities of the age before us. Here in 2010 we are well into the 21st century and decidedly across the threshold of an idea-based economy. Good jobs today are those for which brains count more than brawn and creativity is worth more than punctuality.
Manufacturing — make no mistake — won’t ever disappear, no matter how virtual the economy gets. Instead, it morphs, from a factory-centric image in which widgets travel an assembly line being tapped and tightened by hourly-wage workers, to a brave new world with two classes of production: craft and commodity. In the first class, brains manifest as artisanal skill, applying true craftsmanship to the welding, machining, mixing, or finishing needed to convert materials into goods. At the high end, companies like Harley Davidson manufacture stuff that customers treat as art. “Good” manufacturing jobs in this class will reward skill and flair with price points that are plenty high to justify at least a middle class living.
The commodity class of production is based on a very different kind of intellectual property — systems engineering. In this rebranded manufacturing universe, ideas that earn money are those that allow machinery to automate and ever more precisely control high-volume, low-cost, predictable production. The goods rolling off these assembly lines will have been touched by few, if any, human hands before the ultimate customer pulls it off a shelf somewhere. I like to think of it as “robotics,” because the image is cool, but also because it’s a fair way to describe a manufacturing sector with virtually no jobs in the factory, but plenty in engineering. Again, the leverage implied in this class of manufacturing job certainly justifies a good salary.
Good jobs are there in 21st century manufacturing, but the icons that reflect them look more like a master sculptor or NASA scientist than an anonymous guy in coveralls.
Kevin O’Marah is group vice president, supply chain research for AMR Research, a unit of Gartner, Inc., and a member of the Manufacturing Executive Leadership Board.
