Does this sound like Indiana?

From this week's past Sunday Herald:

SCOTLAND'S BUSINESS community is lagging behind the rest of the UK when it comes to harnessing the benefits of technology, and is in grave danger of losing out in the race into the digital age, according to new research.

An exhaustive and detailed survey of Britain's small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) shows clear evidence that Scotland is failing to keep pace with technological change.

The research - commissioned by BT and shown exclusively to the Sunday Herald - reveals that despite 10 years of talk about the need to keep ahead of the internet wave, 67% of Scotland's SMEs still derive no turnover at all from online sales. Across the board, the country's smaller operations are lagging behind their UK rivals when it comes to placing IT at the heart of commercial life.

It does to me.

China viewed from Australia

Actually, Chinese tech industry.

The Age has an article on the emerging Chinese computer industry. While not something I necessarily track, I have seen nothing about Chinese computing.

But now the Chinese are producing a PC that uses a Chinese-designed microprocessor and operating system. It's early days yet but the development is significant. It shows that China has developed the capability of designing and producing its own microprocessors. If I were AMD or Intel, I would see this as a significant long-term challenge.

The world grows more competitive, we must not accept complacency. We did with our manufacturing base. Read this post about a Muncie Star-Press article and see the effect our earlier complacency.

Muncie Star-Press on Change from Manufacturing

Well worth reading but for those of us living in the old automobile manufacturing cities ought to know most of this already:

Officials had been trying to emphasize in recent years that the local economy was going to become less dependent on manufacturing whether it was ready or not.

Dan Allen, president of the Muncie-Delaware County Chamber of Commerce, noted in mid-2006 that local economic development efforts were sometimes only able to keep pace with job losses in manufacturing.

"As fast as we're pedaling, the deterioration of manufacturing is pedaling faster," Allen said.

Ball State University economist Patrick Barkey agreed.

"We're familiar with manufacturing," Barkey said. "Unfortunately we're more familiar with them when they shut down."

The rest of the article is here. I did not see any politician interviewed for the article.

Info on the state employment statistics

Here is the link to InContext which touts itself as "State of Indiana and Indiana University Partnership for Economic Development". The February issue has employment statistics as of last November here. Yes, last year was as bad as it seemed.

More on Borg Warner

The Mount Pleasant County Assessor calls the plant a dinosaur:

Mount Pleasant Township Assessor Deb Crosley predicts the BorgWarner factory will become a "dinosaur" after it's vacated.

"I can't see any other manufacturers coming in here wanting to buy a 1930s building," said Crosley, who has ridden through the factory in a golf cart. "They've done a lot of upgrades, but manufacturing is now run by robots and technology. I can't see it being utilized for anything other than storage and office space. My guess is it will become another ABB situation: sitting there not being utilized for anything."

Not that this comparison with ABB is shared:

"It's a very large facility," said Terry Murphy, vice president of the Muncie Delaware County Economic Development Alliance. "There are not many users who need in excess of 1 million square feet, so you have to look at subdividing and the economics of making it compatible."

The BorgWarner factory is a more typical manufacturing facility than the 740,000-square-foot, former Westinghouse/ABB large transformer factory, which features a 99-foot ceiling.

The first paragraph above and this following excerpt have something to teach us about today's manufacturing:

One drawback to older buildings is that they are energy inefficient, said Cortney Stover, a spokeswoman for the Indiana Finance Authority, which manages the state's brownfields program.

Crosley calls plants like BorgWarner "extinct."

Large plants meant large numbers of people being employed and large property tax payments filling local coffers. Large factories no longer exist. We will not see large segments of our population working at one factory. This makes life difficult for all. Think how easy government had it with dealing with large manufacturing companies like General Motors and Ford or U.S. Steel. Think how easy the workers had it working for those same companies. That kind of world ended a ways back.

I wrote that last paragraph not as an implied attack on unions as is so common here in Anderson. The world was much different 30-40 years ago when we thought the US was top of the heap, always would be and what was good for GM was good for the country. Hindsight is always 20/20 vision. Before anyone criticizes what was done back then needs to put themselves in the shoes of the people making decisions back then.

We do not have the luxury of a limited competition world. We live in a world where manufacturing requires automation and not a lot of bodies and those bodies need skills. Yes, the world of our father's changed and now what do we leave for our children?

We need to emphasize education and skills and flexibility in careers. We need to understand that competition means taking risks and being out on the cutting edge. We need the imagination to recognize new opportunities. We will need to work harder to stay in place.

Consider that about 1,200 are gone from Guide and we got 600 with Nestle. The Greensburg Honda factory will employ approximately 2000. I suggest these show the sizes of current manufacturing jobs: 600- 2000 per plant. That is a far cry from 20,000. To get the kind of manufacturing employment that covers 20,000 people, we need to more companies. (note, I am not even going to talk about wages and benefits differences because that is just too complicated for right now). I doubt that we - or any other place - can find enough manufacturing companies who want to open a plant in Anderson. So emphasizing factory work is not a long term benefit. We need a diversified economy.