I had to post this excerpt from Steve Mackay's blog...
Dear Colleague,I am grateful to my colleague, Ian Gibson, for passing on a copy of the recent BBC Richard Dimbleby lecture, presented by the well known engineer and industrialist, James Dyson. Some of his thoughts are discussed below. As Ian dryly remarked - 'Dyson is no sucker'. Although a superb engineer, he is also a businessman with an extraordinary manufacturing business operating throughout the world and he has clarity with regards to engineering and its place in our society.Although his comments are focused on the decline of manufacturing in the UK (where he remarked irritably that frivolous designs are often considered as important as designing an aeroplane), they have applicability to us wherever we are in the world today. To survive and prosper as engineers we need to urgently focus on creating new, more advanced products and to be continually innovative. Simply relying on 'shallow styling' and marketing is a sure-fire dead end. Service, creative industries and software products cannot replace manufacturing. His large manufacturing company almost went under with the massive increase in taxes and costs in the UK. To survive he shifted production to lower cost countries, but boosted his R & D and engineering design team in the UK. He is now prospering. He points out that whilst China has mastered low cost production they are now going hell for leather in mastering high level engineering design (which they are increasingly doing with their acquisitions of companies such as RCA televisions, Alcatel cellphones and Dornier aircraft - notable examples)....
To read the rest of Steve's blog, visit this link:
http://idc-online.com/blogs/?country=United+States
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