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SUMMARY OF PREVIOUS PRESENTATIONS H. Guyford Stever Let me begin by telling story. In l975 on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the Soviet Academy of Science, I was in Moscow as their guest. While attending a session that was being presented in Russian, which I could not follow, I was de- lighted to be tapped on the shoulder and invited out to talk with Georgi Arbatov. He is the head of the North American Institute, an immense organization that keeps the leaders of the Soviet Union completely informed on everything that is going on in North America, mostly in the United States. (By the way, I am abso- lutely sure that the talks this afternoon are already in their hands and being digested right now.) In any case I sat down opposite his desk, and he fixed me with his eyes and said, "Dr. Stever, America is the greatest ad hoc nation that every was." Well, I thought, I still do not know what the subject of the conversation is, but I thought first of ad hoc committees. They are the ones that the chairman can dismiss at will, and I was wondering which chairman was going to dismiss us. In any case, I finally discovered he really meant that before we ever did anything significant we had to have a tremendous crisis, a blow that hit us over the head with immense force, and even then we could only begin a slow process of building a consensus, while confusion reigned. One of our speakers discussed such consensus building, and that is exactly what has been going on for about a decade on the subject of our forum today. From my point of view, and I have been involved in that process for the full decade, these discussions today have been a good summary of that consensus building, with understandable data, with clear analyses of the problems, and with creative suggestions of the paths to take toward the solution of some of our manufacturing problems. Our first two speakers brought together a statement of the problem of the past, where we stand today, where the future is, and what our hopes are. From now on I think we can concentrate on what we do about our problems, rather than trying to go deeper into analyzing them. The best thing about their presentations was that both were optimistic: one, a professor, analytical, very knowledgeable, very well connected with industry and all that is going on in the world; the other an industrial manager deeply immersed in trying to fight his way out. There are no single villains (we started off trying to find one, by the way, a few years back). Our keynote speakers pointed out the many advantages we have. They pointed out that the most important future fields of manufactures are pre- cisely those fields in which we are strongest, in which computers and software l27
l28 and microprocessors get together, in manufacturing technology. We are very strong in future industries such as genetic engineering. They listed the mistakes of the past. They said that capital became too expensive, and they asked who was to blame; that there was a short-term outlook, and they asked who was to blame; that there was a neglect of R&D, and especially of manufacturing technology and manufacturing, and they asked who was to blame. They pointed out that our strategic thinkers did not recognize the nature of the changes in international competition that overtook us in the last two decades. In fact, in the begining we did not even recognize we were in inter- national competition. They suggested courses of action: Support innovation, capital investment, and saving and make capital less expensive; and revive engineering education and our whole process of research in manufacturing technology. What they left us with is the belief that we now understand the problem very well, and, following them, we should be cautiously optimistic that we have a good chance of success in a comeback. But there is still a lot to do. Both the first and second panels on manufacturing proved the point that was made by our first two speakersâthat we have and have had throughout the manu- facturing crisis many successful companies, leadership companies. We were shown many examples of things that are going well. They made an important general point about parts production, assembly, and testingâthat the future is going to require a much greater emphasis on securing data and handling information in the manufacturing process. We should change manufacturing from an art to a science in which we control processes accurately. The second manufacturing session argued that the systems approach was the key to the future. The speakers pointed out that we have examples of real success in many different industriesâaircraft, semiconductors, telecommunications (the examples of successes in machine tools were primarily from overseas). The panel's broad outlook covered a variety of problems for management, capital investment, scientific discovery and technical innovation, education, public policy and, last, labor policy and laborers. I feel now that I understand the problems we face. I am optimistic that we can do what we need to do, and I am looking forward hearing from six people with the detailed solutions.
