It's never a good sign when a conference keynoter starts his discussion by alerting the audience that U.S. manufacturing is in a crisis. But it is a reality the industry must face, said Andy Chatha, president of ARC Advisory Group, during his opening presentation at ARC's 13th annual conference held last month in Orlando, FL.
The current environment - burdened by a credit deficit, rising unemployment, global recession, and lack of trust - is exacerbated by a shortage of skilled human resources, as well as political and social pressure to develop alternative fuels and "go green," Chatha said. Now, however, is not the time to sit still. Rather, he said, there are actions companies can take to save themselves and manufacturing as a whole.
The conference, titled "Winning Strategies and Best Practices for Sustainable Manufacturing," was itself a reflection of the times. Attendance at the forum was down dramatically, to 450 people, from 650 last year. And those in Orlando heard practical advice on how to survive the economic storm, including outsourcing non-core operations, improving asset lifecycle performance with better information management, using wireless across the network infrastructure, standardizing processes across plants, simplifying automation architectures, and adopting virtual technology.
"Learn as much as you can about the virtual world," Chatha said, mentioning virtual servers (cloud computing), virtual commissioning (digital factory), and virtual asset information management (virtual plant). "The technology is here. Innovate out of the downturn."