" THE COST OF OFFSHORING"

According to Richard C. Peters, CMfgE, PE, of Bucyrus, Ohio, is the president of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) for 2004. Peters is chief manufacturing engineer at The Timken Co.

One thing is that the cost of offshoring is more than just the loss of jobs. When products are no longer made in the United States, the skills necessary to make them will disappear. Resurrecting those skills is in many cases impossible. Technological innovation springs from research. And manufacturing—which accounts for 60 percent of the U.S. economy and about 62 percent of exports—still supports nearly two-thirds of all research and development. Lee Iacocca once reasoned that ideas spring up from plant floor and assembly lines. If you don’t see things being made, you’re less likely to think up better ways to design, engineer and manufacture them.

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