A manufacturing renaissance for America?
Over the last few decades, the sector of the U.S. economy devoted to manufacturing has lost ground to the services sector. The number of U.S. manufacturing jobs has declined from nearly 20 million in 1979 to about 12 million today. Yet as the recent global recession suggests, services can propel the economy only so far. There is no substitute for making tangible, useful products. But what form will new kinds of manufacturing take? At an MIT roundtable discussion on Monday titled “The Future of Manufacturing — Advanced Technologies,” more than a dozen of the Institute’s faculty shared converging ideas about how to reinvigorate America’s goods-producing businesses. The roundtable followed a broader campus forum hosted by MIT President Susan Hockfield on March 1, in which faculty members, some of whom also participated in Monday’s discussion, offered ideas about how to strengthen America innovation and thus its overall economy. These meetings are...