Bill Waddell on American Manufacturing

By Ron Pereira Updated on May 17th, 2017

I don’t pretend to be an “economic guru” by any means… honestly it all makes my head hurt a bit.

I did, however, thoroughly enjoy reading Bill Waddell’s thoughts on the state of manufacturing in America – and really the West in general.

Bill, for those that don’t know, may have forgotten more about manufacturing than many of us will ever know. He also writes over at Evolving Excellence and is, um, passionate. Yeah, passionate is a good word.

I’ll also warn you ahead of time, Bill is an opinionated fellow… but seems to have a tremendous amount of wisdom that I, for one, have personally learned from.

If you’d like to download and read Bill’s rant, I mean thoughts, visit his website and download the Word document titled “The Hollow American Economy.”

After you read – or at least skim the paper – I’d be interested in your thoughts. Specifically, do you agree with Bill? Or do you think he may be missing the mark?

Ron Pereira

Ron has more than 20 years of experience in various manufacturing, supply chain, and senior leadership roles. Ron has held the titles of process engineer, engineering manager, master black belt, and director of manufacturing & continuous improvement. In 2002 Ron was the first American to win the Nokia Global Six Sigma and Overall Quality award in Helsinki, Finland. Ron holds a bachelor's degree in automated manufacturing and an MBA in technology management.

Jason M Stokes
May 21, 2009 - 10:02 am
Reply

While I disagree with a few of his points, overall, I agree with him. We’ve whored ourselves out to low cost, low quality Chinese and Indian manufacturing, for what, the chance to make a few extra bucks for the guys at the top of the economic pyramid?

I live in a city that used to be the 4th largest in the U.S., with hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs. Now, I’d wager maybe 50,000 people work in manufacturing region wide. Where is everything made? China, India, Malaysia, etc.

Someday, the powers that be will realize that, yes, this is a house of cards. Yesterday, American Express cut 4,000 jobs. Its stock went up as a result. Maybe everyone should fire every employee except the executive team and watch the stock skyrocket to thousands per share.

Blech.