Political gridlock in Washington... the lingering effects of the financial crisis... structural problems such as unemployment and the skills gap of our work force... the mediocre K-12 educational system. Are our best days behind us?
Joel Kurtzman persuasively shows why all the talk about America's decline is not only baseless but dead wrong. Our best days, are, in fact, ahead of us.
Four transformational forces--unrivaled manufacturing depth, soaring levels of creativity, massive new energy sources, and gigantic amounts of capital waiting to be invested--have been gathering steam. When combined they will provide the foundation for a much stronger economy, robust growth, and broad-based prosperity that will propel the United States to new heights.
One endlessly repeated anxiety is that "we don't make anything here, anymore." The reality, though, is that the US is the world's dominant manufacturing power--and growing. American companies produce 20 percent of the world's goods in the US and perhaps another 15 to 20 percent outside our country. And much of what we make is recession-proof--such as software, jetliners, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and food.
Kurtzman reveals the stories of the unsung heroes who are the creative force leading the second American century, describing the payoff of the investment in our best minds. American companies have stunning levels of talent and creativity at work in the world's fastest growing economic sectors--biotech, pharmaceuticals, computer hardware and software, telecommunications, advanced manufacturing, materials science, and aeronautical and space engineering. In these fields, Americans are without peer and consistently break new ground.
We are coming to the realization that America is no longer beholden to the despots of foreign energy. Thanks to advances in technology developed in the US, we now have among the world's largest energy reserves, and are richer in energy resources than Saudi Arabia and second only to Russia.
These three strengths--manufacturing, soaring levels of creativity, and energy independence--will be magnified and synergistically combined with the unprecedented amount of capital that now lies idle. US companies of all types are hoarding cash and securities worth more than $4 trillion--an amount larger than the world's fourth largest economy, Germany. When the money starts flowing and is invested, it will rapidly propel every part of the economy forward.

Here is history that reads like fiction: the riveting story of two founding fathers of American industry--Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick--and the bloody steelworkers' strike that transformed their fabled partnership into a furious rivalry. Author Les Standiford begins at the bitter end, when the dying Carnegie proposes a final meeting after two decades of separation, probably to ease his conscience. Frick's reply: "Tell him that I'll meet him in hell."
It is a fitting epitaph. Set against the backdrop of the Gilded Age, a time when Horatio Alger preached the gospel of upward mobility and expansionism went hand in hand with optimism, "Meet You in Hell is a classic tale of two men who embodied the best and worst of American capitalism. Standiford conjures up the majesty and danger of steel manufacturing, the rough-and-tumble of late-nineteenth-century big business, and the fraught relationship of "the world's richest man" and the ruthless coke magnate to whom he entrusted his companies. Enamored of Social Darwinism, the emerging school of thought that applied the notion of survival of the fittest to human society, both Carnegie and Frick would introduce revolutionary new efficiencies and meticulous cost control to their enterprises, and would quickly come to dominate the world steel market.
But their partnership had a dark side, revealed most starkly by their brutal handling of the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892. When Frick, acting on Carnegie's orders to do whatever was necessary, unleashed three hundred Pinkerton detectives, the result was the deadliest clash between management and labor in U.S. history. WHILE BLOOD FLOWED, FRICK SMOKED ran one newspaper headline. Thepublic was outraged. An anarchist tried to assassinate Frick. Even today, the names Carnegie and Frick cannot be uttered in some union-friendly communities.
Resplendent with tales of backroom chicanery, bankruptcy, philanthropy, and personal idiosyncrasy, "Meet You in Hell is a fitting successor to Les Standiford's masterly "Last Train to Paradise. Artfully weaving the relationship of these titans through the larger story of a young nation's economic rise, Standiford has created an extraordinary work of popular history.

3D Printing for Product Designers closes the gap between the rhetoric of 3D printing in manufacturing and the reality for product designers. It provides practical strategies to support the adoption and integration of 3D printing into professional practice. 3D printing has evolved over the last decade into a practical proposition for manufacturing, opening up innovative opportunities for product designers. From its foundations in rapid prototyping, additive manufacturing has developed into a range of technologies suitable for end-use products. This book shows you how to evaluate and sensitively understand people, process, and products and demonstrates how solutions for working with additive manufacturing can be developed in context. It includes a practical, step-by-step plan for product designers and CEOs aimed at supporting the successful implementation of 3D printing by stakeholders at all levels of a manufacturing facility, tailored to their stage of technology integration and business readiness. It features a wide range of real-world examples of practice illustrated in full colour, across industries such as healthcare, construction, and film, aligning with the strategic approach outlined in the book. The book can be followed chronologically to guide you to transform your process for a company, to meet the unique needs of a specific client, or to be used as a starting point for the product design entrepreneur. Written by experienced industry professionals and academics, this is a fundamental reference for product designers, industrial designers, design engineers, CEOs, consultants, and makers.

Das Buch bietet einen ganzheitlichen und praktischen Ansatz fur das Lean Management in der gesamten Wertschoepfungskette eines Unternehmens. Der Rahmen und die Instrumente des Lean Managements zeigen die optimale Gestaltung und Anwendung von Methoden, Werkzeugen und Prinzipien fur Unternehmen und Organisationen. Der Autor beschreibt umfassend, wie Unternehmen durch Lean Management in die Lage versetzt werden, sich auf wertschoepfende Tatigkeiten und Prozesse zu konzentrieren, um einen langfristigen und nachhaltigen Wettbewerbsvorteil zu erzielen. Anhand einer Fulle von Best Practices, Branchenbeispielen und Fallstudien werden die Vielfalt und die Moeglichkeiten von Lean-Management-Methoden, -Methoden und -Prinzipien aufgezeigt. Daruber hinaus zeigt das Buch, wie die Lean-Management-Prinzipien letztlich in Branchen wie der Automobilindustrie, dem Gesundheitswesen, dem Bildungswesen und dem Dienstleistungssektor angewendet werden.

Der Motorsport bietet mit seiner Vielzahl an unterschiedlichen Serien, Klassifikationen und Veranstaltungsarten ein breites Spektrum an Betatigungsfeldern. In diesem hochkomplexen und interdisziplinaren Arbeitsumfeld werden ganz besondere Anforderungen an das Management gestellt. Aktive in dieser Branche, aber auch Motorsportinteressierte finden in diesem Buch einen fundierten UEberblick zu den speziellen Anforderungen des Motorsport-Managements. Die Autoren des Bandes vermitteln grundlegendes Fachwissen uber die Organisationsstrukturen und Disziplinen des Motorsports und die fur diese Top-Sportart relevanten Prozesse - stets verknupft mit vielen Beispielen aus der Praxis. In den einundzwanzig Kapiteln machen sie die Leser mit den Ablaufen und Reglements in den nationalen und internationalen Motorsportserien vertraut und zeigen die Strukturen und rechtlichen Fragestellungen dieses popularen Sports auf den unterschiedlichen Ebenen: zwischen Teams, Herstellern, Fahrern, Veranstaltern und den Dach- und Weltverbanden des Motorsports. Die Projekt- und Managementtechniken mit Schwerpunkt Teammanagement, Marketing, Finanzierung sowie ein Blick auf die zukunftigen Entwicklungen des Motorsports komplettieren die Themen. Ziel ist es, dem Leser einen umfassenden Einblick in die High Performance Welt des Motorsports zu geben und die Vielfalt der motorsportlichen Bereiche darzustellen. Der Motorsport von heute ist konfrontiert mit neuen Werten und einem erhoehten Wunsch nach Ressourcenerhaltung und Nachhaltigkeit unseres Planeten. Dabei kann der Motorsport selbst auch Katalysator fur diesen Fortschritt sein. Die Beitrage dieses Werkes zeigen auf, wie der Motorsport als Technologievorreiter mit seinen schnellen und dynamischen Prozessen, Innovationskraft und Kreativitat aktuelle Herausforderungen meistern kann.

The coveted "Made in Italy" label calls to mind visions of nimble-fingered Italian tailors lovingly sewing elegant, high-end clothing. The phrase evokes a sense of authenticity, heritage, and rustic charm. Yet, as Elizabeth L. Krause uncovers in Tight Knit, Chinese migrants are the ones sewing "Made in Italy" labels into low-cost items for a thriving fast-fashion industry--all the while adding new patterns to the social fabric of Italy's iconic industry. Krause offers a revelatory look into how families involved in the fashion industry are coping with globalization based on longterm research in Prato, the historic hub of textile production in the heart of metropolitan Tuscany. She brings to the fore the tensions--over value, money, beauty, family, care, and belonging--that are reaching a boiling point as the country struggles to deal with the same migration pressures that are triggering backlash all over Europe and North America. Tight Knit tells a fascinating story about the heterogeneity of contemporary capitalism that will interest social scientists, immigration experts, and anyone curious about how globalization is changing the most basic of human conditions--making a living and making a life.

Visual Merchandising and Display, Seventh Edition, focuses on all aspects of visual merchandising and display, from classic techniques to the latest developments. Using hundreds of global examples, this text shows how a retailer can optimize its image with its target market by adding interest to window and interior displays. The book includes updated chapters on lighting, fixtures, and interactive media; expanded sections on store planning, CAD programs, floor plans, and planograms; and a new section called Tools for Getting the Job. New to this Edition: - Contains six new case studies and extensively revised and updated images - New section Tools for Getting the Job in Chapter 27 includes tips for creating your own website and using platforms like Behance to showcase your portfolio -Updated and new Go Green boxes discuss current topics in sustainability and visual merchandising Visual Merchandising and Display STUDIO -Study smarter with self-quizzes featuring scored results and personalized study tips -Review concepts with flashcards of terms and definitions -Watch videos that bring chapter concepts to life Instructor Resources -Instructor's Guide with Test Bank provides suggestions for planning the course and using the text in the classroom -PowerPoint (R) presentations include images from the book and provide a framework for lecture and discussion

Flexibility, specialization, and niche marketing are buzzwords in the business literature these days, yet few realize that it was these elements that helped the United States first emerge as a global manufacturing leader between the Civil War and World War I. The huge mass production-based businesses--steel, oil, and autos--have long been given sole credit for this emergence. In "Endless Novelty," Philip Scranton boldly recasts the history of this vital episode in the development of American business, known as the nation's second industrial revolution, by considering the crucial impact of trades featuring specialty, not standardized, production. Scranton takes us on a grand tour through American specialty firms and districts, where, for example, we meet printers and jewelry makers in New York and Providence, furniture builders in Grand Rapids, and tool specialists in Cincinnati. Throughout he highlights the benevolent as well as the strained relationships between workers and proprietors, the lively interactions among entrepreneurs and city leaders, and the personal achievements of industrial engineers like Frederic W. Taylor.

Scranton shows that in sectors producing goods such as furniture, jewelry, machine tools, and electrical equipment, firms made goods to order or in batches, and industrial districts and networks flourished, creating millions of jobs. These enterprises relied on flexibility, skilled labor, close interactions with clients, suppliers, and rivals, and opportunistic pricing to generate profit streams. They built interfirm alliances to manage markets and fashioned specialized institutions--trade schools, industrial banks, labor bureaus, and sales consortia. In creating regional synergies and economies of scope and diversity, the approaches of these industrial firms represent the inverse of mass production.

Challenging views of company organization that have come to dominate the business world in the United States, "Endless Novelty" will appeal to historians, business leaders, and to anyone curious about the structure of American industry.

Textiles were the second-most-traded commodity in all of world history, preceded only by grain. In the Ottoman Empire in particular, the sale and exchange of silks, cottons, and woolens generated an immense amount of revenue and touched every level of society, from rural women tending silkworms to pashas flaunting layers of watered camlet to merchants traveling to Mecca and beyond. Sea Change offers the first comprehensive history of the Ottoman textile sector, arguing that the trade's enduring success resulted from its openness to expertise and objects from far-flung locations. Amanda Phillips skillfully marries art history with social and economic history, integrating formal analysis of various textiles into wider discussions of how trade, technology, and migration impacted the production and consumption of textiles in the Mediterranean from around 1400 to 1800. Surveying a vast network of textile topographies that stretched from India to Italy and from Egypt to Iran, Sea Change illuminates often neglected aspects of material culture, showcasing the objects' ability to tell new kinds of stories.

This book provides a compelling insider's account of how Nike became the world's largest sports and fitness company.It includes a dedicated mailing and e-mail campaign to targeted sports interest media & organisations.How does a young boy from a small Oregon town get swept up in the politics of his chosen sport and become an integral part of possibly the most influential sports company of all time - Nike.Nike began with a handshake and a few hundred dollars passed between Phil Knight and legendary track coach Bill Bowerman more than 35 years ago - and since then it has grown into the world's largest sports and fitness company."Out of Nowhere" provides an unrivalled glimpse into the first 33 years of Nike - from its humble beginnings to its modern guise as a global giant - and takes readers on a rollercoaster ride through all of the company's successes and failures.

Will Africa be the world's next hub of manufacturing? China is answering in the affirmative and investing accordingly. This book dispels the notion that this crucial story is merely about China's exploitation of Africa's resources, illuminating deep questions about our own, Western approach to development, and the implications for the future of manufacturing.Important research on a crucial global business trend: the shifting of manufacturing to Africa and its implications.Fascinating story and perspective from an author with direct experience of how this trend is happening.Rich, vivid, detailed examples illustrating the changing landscape, companies' success and failure in Africa.Insights and lessons highlighting the contrast between China's approach to business and economic development in Africa versus the West's aid-oriented approach.Engaging and absorbing writing, with the author's integral personal story interwoven with the research and ideas.Audience:C-level executives of companies operating internationally who have manufacturing (especially offshore manufacturing) as part of their operations.Senior executives and managers involved in global supply chain strategy and operations.Investors.Business readers interested in China, emerging markets, the global economy, and economic development.Intelligent general readers interested in economic development, foreign aid policy and practice.

For much of the twentieth century, American corporations led the world in terms of technological progress. Why did certain industries have such great success? Experimental Capitalism examines six key industries--automobiles, pneumatic tires, television receivers, semiconductors, lasers, and penicillin--and tracks the highs and lows of American high-tech capitalism and the resulting innovation landscape. Employing "nanoeconomics"--a deep dive into the formation and functioning of companies--Steven Klepper determines how specific companies emerged to become the undisputed leaders that altered the course of their industry's evolution. Klepper delves into why a small number of firms came to dominate their industries for many years after an initial period of tumult, including General Motors, Firestone, and Intel. Even though capitalism is built on the idea of competition among many, he shows how the innovation process naturally led to such dominance. Klepper explores how this domination influenced the search for further innovations. He also considers why industries cluster in specific geographical areas, such as semiconductors in northern California, cars in Detroit, and tires in Akron. He finds that early leading firms serve as involuntary training grounds for the next generation of entrepreneurs who spin off new firms into the surrounding region. Klepper concludes his study with a discussion of the impact of government and the potential for policy to enhance a nation's high-tech industrial base. A culmination of a lifetime of research and thought, Experimental Capitalism takes a dynamic look at how new ideas and innovations led to America's economic primacy.

How can manufacturers of capital goods succeed in service business development? What are the potential network approaches for manufacturing companies planning on extending their service business? Over the last decade, the business environment of capital goods manufacturers has changed dramatically. Few capital goods manufacturers are able to outrun the competition with pure product-related technologies and innovation alone. For this reason they have added services to products as a way of responding to eroding margins and the loss of strategic differentiation through product innovation and technological superiority. Based on over twelve years of research, this book provides academics and business professionals with a thorough overview of the strategies available for value creation through service business development. It features case studies and covers a wide range of topics, including emerging issues such as service business in small and medium-sized companies, business innovation through services and the impact of rapidly growing Asian markets.

Take up your all-access pass to one of the most dynamic areas of the international fashion industry. Lavishly illustrated and packed with industry insights, The Fashion Show is the must-have guide to showing off a collection. You will learn about: The context of the fashion show and its significance for brands, designers, journalists and others working in the fashion industry; How a fashion show is produced, everything from agreeing a vision to casting the models to setting up backstage; What happens on show day, and how to use the impact of your show. Future fashion designers, fashion marketers, fashion managers, fashion PRs - and creative practitioners looking to learn more about this fascinating part of the industry, you are cordially invited to join Gill Stark in the front row of The Fashion Show.

"A brilliant and beautiful book, the mature work of a lifetime, must reading for students of the globalization debate."
---Tom Hayden
""Slaves to Fashion" is a remarkable achievement, several books in one: a gripping history of sweatshops, explaining their decline, fall, and return; a study of how the media portray them; an analysis of the fortunes of the current anti-sweatshop movement; an anatomy of the global traffic in apparel, in particular the South-South competition that sends wages and working conditions plummeting toward the bottom; and not least, a passionate declaration of faith that humanity can find a way to get its work done without sweatshops. This is engaged sociology at its most stimulating."
---Todd Gitlin
." . . unflinchingly portrays the reemergence of the sweatshop in our dog-eat-dog economy."
---"Los Angeles Times"

Just as Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed" uncovered the plight of the working poor in America, Robert J. S. Ross's "Slaves to Fashion" exposes the dark side of the apparel industry and its exploited workers at home and abroad. It's both a lesson in American business history and a warning about one of the most important issues facing the global capital economy-the reappearance of the sweatshop.
Vividly detailing the decline and tragic rebirth of sweatshop conditions in the American apparel industry of the twentieth century, Ross explains the new sweatshops as a product of unregulated global capitalism and associated deregulation, union erosion, and exploitation of undocumented workers. Using historical material and economic and social data, the author shows that after a brief thirty-five years of fair practices, the U.S. apparel business has once again sunk to shameful abuse and exploitation.
Refreshingly jargon-free but documented in depth, "Slaves to Fashion" is the only work to estimate the size of the sweatshop problem and to systematically show its impact on apparel workers' wages. It is also unique in its analysis of the budgets and personnel used in enforcing the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Anyone who is concerned about this urgent social and economic topic and wants to go beyond the headlines should read this important and timely contribution to the rising debate on low-wage factory labor. Robert J.S. Ross is Professor of Sociology, Clark University. He is an expert in the area of sweatshops and globalization. He is an activist academic who travels and lectures extensively and has published numerous related articles.

"While much has been written about the industrial revolution," writes Lawrence Peskin, "we rarely read about industrial revolutionaries." This absence, he explains, reflects the preoccupation of both classical and Marxist economics with impersonal forces rather than with individuals. In Manufacturing Revolution Peskin deviates from both dominant paradigms by closely examining the words and deeds of individual Americans who made things in their own shops, who met in small groups to promote industrialization, and who, on the local level, strove for economic independence.

In speeches, petitions, books, newspaper articles, club meetings, and coffee--house conversations, they fervently discussed the need for large-scale American manufacturing a half-century before the Boston Associates built their first factory. Peskin shows how these economic pioneers launched a discourse that continued for decades, linking industrialization to the cause of independence and guiding the new nation along the path of economic ambition. Based upon extensive research in both manuscript and printed sources from the period between 1760 and 1830, this book will be of interest to historians of the early republic and economic historians as well as to students of technology, business, and industry.

In this absorbing narrative, Barry E.C. Boothman traces the history of Abitibi Power & Paper Limited alongside the rise and fall of the newsprint industry and the advent of Canadian corporate capitalism. In the first half of the twentieth century, Abitibi was Canada's biggest manufacturer - an apparent success story after the Wall Street crash of 1929 and a company deemed "too big to fail" - but the company eventually ended up at the centre of the longest and most controversial bankruptcy in Canadian history. Moving from the frontier areas of northern Ontario to the heart of the continental economy, Corporate Cataclysm shows how competitive strategies, industrial organization, corporate finance, and law combined with the empire-building dreams of entrepreneurs and the concerns of politicians to generate an economic disaster. It then chronicles the disputes and intense strife that plagued Abitibi's fourteen-year receivership.

Japan was the first major non-western nation to take on board the Western technological and organizational advances of the century after the fist industrial revolution. It subsequently proved fully able to exploit and contribute to the broad, sustained technological advances that began in the twentieth century, as science became harnessed to technology. Japan's economic development remains a model for many technologically less advanced countries which have not yet mastered modern technology to organizational forms; and a knowledge of Japanese technological and economic history can contribute importantly to our understanding of economic growth in the modern era. This book studies the industrial development of Japan since the mid-nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on how the various industries built technological capabilities. The Japanese were extraordinarily creative in searching out and learning to use modern technologies, and the authors investigate the emergence of entrepreneurs who began new and risky businesses, how the business organizations evolved to cope with changing technological conditions, and how the managers, engineers and workers acquired organizational and technological skills through technology importation, learning-by-doing, and their own R&D activities. The book investigates the interaction between private entrepreneural activities and public policy, through a general examination of economic and industrial development, a study of the evolution of management systems, and six industrial case studies: textiles, iron and steel, electrical and communications equipment, automobiles, shipbuilding and aircraft, and pharmaceuticals. The authors show how the Japanese government has played an important supportive role in the continuing innovation, without being a substitute for aggressive business enterprise constantly venturing into unfamiliar terrains.

The Breakthrough Program for Increasing Quality, Shortening Cycle Times, and Creating Shareholder Value In Every Area of Your Organization

Time and quality are the two most important metrics in improving any companys production and profit performance. Lean Six Sigma explains how to impact your companys performance in each, by combining the strength of todays two most important initiatives­­Lean Production and Six Sigma­­into one integrated program.

The first book to provide a step-by-step roadmap for profiting from the best elements of Lean and Six Sigma, this breakthrough volume will show you how to:

• Achieve major cost and lead time reductions this year
  
• Compress order-to-delivery cycle times
  
• Battle process variation and waste throughout your organization
  

Separately, Lean Production and Six Sigma have changed the face of the manufacturing business. Together, they become an unprecedented tool for improving product and process quality, production efficiency, and across-the-board profitability. Lean Six Sigma introduces you to todays most dynamic program for streamlining the performance of both your production department and your back office, and providing you with the cost reduction and quality improvements you need to stay one step ahead of your competitors.

Lean Six Sigma shows how Lean and Six Sigma methods complement and reinforce each other. If also provides a detailed roadmap of implementation so you can start seeing significant returns in less than a year.--­­From the Preface

Businesses fundamentally exist to provide returns to their stakeholders. Lean Six Sigma outlines a program for combining the synergies of these two initiatives to provide your organization with greater speed, less process variation, and more bottom-line impact than ever before.

A hands-on guidebook for integrating the production efficiencies of the Lean Enterprise with the cost and quality tools of Six Sigma, this breakthrough book features detailed insights on:

• The Lean Six Sigma Value Proposition­­How combining Lean and Six Sigma provides unmatched potential for improving shareholder value
  
• The Lean Six Sigma Implementation Process­­How to prepare your organization for a seamless incorporation of Lean Six Sigma tools and techniques
  
• Leveraging Lean Six Sigma­­Strategies for extending Lean Six Sigmas reach within and beyond your corporate walls
  

Variation is evil.--­­Jack Welch

Six Sigma was the zero-variation quality lynchpin around which Jack Welch transformed GE into one of the worlds most efficient­­and valuable­­corporations. Lean Production helped Toyota cut waste, slash costs, and substantially improve resource utilization and cycle times.

Yet, as both would admit, there was still room for improvement.

Lean Six Sigma takes you to the next level of improvement, one that for the first time unites product and process excellence with the goal of enhancing shareholder value creation. Providing insights into the application of Lean Six Sigma to both the manufacturing processes and the less-data-rich service and transactional processes, it promises to revolutionize the performance efficiencies in virtually every area of your organization­­as it positively and dramatically impacts your shareholder value.

This book assesses developmental experience in different countries as well as British expansion following the industrial revolution from a developmental perspective. It explains why some nations are rich and others are poor, and discusses how manufacturing made economies flourish and spur economic development. It explains how today's governments can design and implement industrial policy, and how they can determine economically strategic sectors to break out of Low and Middle Income Traps. Closely linked to global trade and (im)balances, industrialization was never an accident. Industrialization explains how some countries experience export-led growth and others import-led slowdowns. Many confuse industrialization with the construction of factory buildings rather than a capacity and skill building process through certain stages. Industrial policy helps countries advance through those stages. Explaining technical concepts in understandable terms, the book discusses the capacity and limits of the developmental state in industrialization and in general in economic development, demonstrating how picking-the-winner type focused industrial policy has worked in different countries. It also discusses how industrial policy and science, technology and innovation policies should be sequenced for best results.

During the 1990s, an ambitious three-year research program identified the steps manufacturing companies must take to become globally competitive. The prestigious Next Generation Manufacturing (NGM) Project combined the insights and perspectives of business and academia's most astute thinkers. It featured the cumulative experience of over thirty top global manufacturing firms, the Agility Forum, the engineering and management schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Oak Ridge Centers for Manufacturing Technology, as well as many other highly regarded organizations. The Project resulted in a vision for the future of manufacturing and a framework for action.

Next Generation Manufacturing is the first book to cover the NGM Project and its recommendations for creating and maintaining a successful manufacturing enterprise. It describes how manufacturing is continuing to evolve and the significant changes companies must make to remain competitive in the next decade.

Addressing the dilemmas faced by today's corporate management, the authors walk the reader through strategies for meeting corporate goals and the expectations of customers; the techniques and tools available to achieve them; and how to define success through measurements. They offer a comprehensive program for applying the product development techniques, metrics, and knowledge management approaches for stellar manufacturing.

Vital to next generation manufacturing is understanding the roles of innovation, knowledge, and people in ensuring the competitive readiness of a company. The book identifies the strategies to achieve this, including:
* Build a strong workforce
* Develop and implement advanced knowledge processes
* Use advanced manufacturing systems, processes, equipment, and technology
* Integrate competitive strengths

Included are real-world examples from participating firms in the NGM Project that have achieved NGM attributes, such as Chrysler and Boeing, as well as a full-length hypothetical case. Also provided are the methodologies for making a high-quality product at the lowest possible cost and getting it to market in the shortest possible time.

The authors have extended the work of the NGM Project by developing ways to link NGM with corporate strategic goals for achieving and sustaining profitability. They expand the concepts of NGM by covering management and financial issues that, until now, have not been fully addressed. The authors also provide a glimpse into the future, examining where manufacturing may be headed beyond the next decade.

For any manager or owner concerned about the long-term survival of their manufacturing enterprise, Next Generation Manufacturing provides the knowledge, strategies, and tools necessary for achieving success in the twenty-first century.

Praise for
NEXT GENERATION MANUFACTURING

"Jordan and Michel capture the diverse and often conflicting concerns of manufacturing business leaders worldwide. . . . The lessons [in this book] have widespread application in companies of almost any size."-Professor Peter Sackett, Head of Department, Cranfield University

"Throughout history, manufacturing of flint arrowheads to sophisticated computer chips has been a mainstay of societal growth. Indeed, technology epochs have been named for significant occurrences; e.g., the Industrial Revolution, manufacturing productivity fueled by mass production technology. We are now witnessing the start of one of these rare epochs, the Knowledge Age, manufacturing productivity fueled by information and knowledge technology. Next Generation Manufacturing provides an exciting insight into this emerging epoch; an easily read, accurate, and insightful book on manufacturing history in the making."-Gene Meieran, Intel Fellow, Intel Corporation