Forget Low Tech; Concentrate on High Tech…

and watch your economy slide. That’s the point MIT robotics professor Rodney Brooks makes in the October 2011 Technology Review. Finding something only we can make and ceding the rest to China exemplifies “the wrongheaded thinking that pervades discussions about the role of manufacturing in America’s future.” It also reflects the false idea that high tech manufacturing techniques can be used only to make high tech products, such as lasers and jet engines, that only big companies buy.

High tech machines and techniques can be used to make sneakers and tooth brushes. Some ignore this point, arguing, let the Chinese make this stuff and we’ll design it. After all, high-end work is the kind we excel at. But not for long, Brooks argued. People who make things eventually figure out how to improve them. “Once we outsource to manufacturers in China, they soon offer us design, too, since they are the ones who can most easily change existing product lines or introduce new ones.”

Chinese manufacturers will parley the knowledge and experience they gain by making things into new ideas. “The contractor soon becomes an innovator in its own right, recruiting local designers to work with its now expert manufacturing engineers and get results faster than any U.S.-based design team” (emphasis added).

Advantage goes to the company that can adapt faster than its competitors. The key, according to Brooks, is to democratize the shop floor the same way computers democratize the office. “We can create tools for ordinary workers, with intuitive interfaces, extensive use of vision and other sensors, and even the Web-based distribution mechanisms of the IT industry.