Today we can phone a friend in Prague and get annoyed when it takes more than a minute to get connected. We may blame our location, the cell phone, or the carrier. But think about it: This pocket-sized or smaller device reaches out to a satellite in distant space and then all the way down to Prague, and we get irritated because the process is not instantaneous. In Columbus' time, it might have taken 100 days to get our message across, if at all. A cell phone is as close as we come to magic these days.

By the same token, we can visit our local grocer and experience sheer bounty. Behind most products are a variety of manufacturing processes — processing, packaging, quality control, security, traceability, inventory control, supply chain management, and more. We have come to expect our grocer to carry our brand, in our favorite flavor, in our preferred size, without unwanted additives, and at a price we may complain about, but that we pay. If a specific product is not there, we may blame the store, the help, the supplier, or the manufacturer. It is in our nature to focus on the one in a hundred or a thousand that breaks down or does not meet our standards. We rarely recognize all that goes right, and that can exceed 99%.

Science, of course, is the soil from which technology springs. And technology is the means by which science is translated into things and processes we can use. Technology presents us with a real set of working miracles. The miracles do not come from good intentions; they come from hard-working people. We stand on the shoulders of thousands who have created radio tubes, transistors, computer chips, microprocessors, machine vision systems, sensors, servo devices, actuators, robots, machine tools, and software. We should be thankful that logistics and communications networks have been invented as the means to deliver these wonders to us.

Automotive design, engineering, and manufacturing have been at the forefront of technological progress. However, technological miracles are no cure for management failures.

We have witnessed serious and persistent failures in management within the once Big Three automakers. They have missed the point at nearly every juncture. They did not understand technological miracles, and so they misapplied them. What should they have been concentrating on over past three decades? How about low gas mileage or alternative fuel development, smaller and more efficient cars, safer cars, longer-lasting and recyclable cars, higher resale value, proper use of automation, and the persistent application of quality standards? What did they concentrate on? Hummers, SUVs, gas suckers, marketing ploys, bad judgment in negotiations with the unions, poor support and selection of suppliers ... The miracle may be in the technology, but the application of miraculous technology is only possible with good management day after day.

One of Albert Einstein's favorite pieces of advice was to "keep asking questions." U.S. auto industry managers have not followed that advice. They accepted answers that echoed what they wanted to hear. Those were and remain the wrong questions and the wrong answers.