Archive for the ‘Innovation’ Category

Newer Entries »

Fall Trade Shows Provide Nearsourcing and Reshoring Opportunities

Tuesday, October 1st, 2013

Since there is no IMTS show being held in the United States this fall, and FABTECH, to be held November 18-21, 2013 at McCormick Place in Chicago, IL is a long way from southern California, the best opportunities to attend a manufacturing trade show for southern Californians are:

Design-2-Part Show – October 9-10, 2013 – Pasadena Convention Center

WESTEC – October 15-17, 2013 – Los Angeles Convention Center

The Southern California Design-2-Part Show attracts thousands of design engineers, manufacturing engineers, managers, and buyers to meet local and national job shops and contract manufacturers to source custom parts, components, and services. With over 175 exhibiting companies, this year’s show will be D2P’s largest show ever in Pasadena.
The show in Pasadena is one of eleven Design-2-Part Shows owned by the Job Shop Company that either have or will take place in 2013 in major manufacturing hubs within the United States. The show policy since inception over 38 years ago has been to exclusively feature job shops and contract manufacturers with manufacturing operations in the United States. Companies that do not have facilities in the U.S. are not permitted to exhibit.
I will be presenting a seminar titled “Returning Manufacturing to America Using Total Cost Analysis,” on October 10, 2013 at 11:30 am at the show. The one-hour session is free to all show attendees of the Southern California Design-2-Part Show.

The Job Shop Company’s press release states:  “Ms. Nash-Hoff’s presentation will cover how supply chain dynamics, labor costs and fuel costs are changing the status quo. She will present a true understanding of the “Total Cost of Ownership” (TCO) concept including what most executives miss when analyzing TCO. The highlight of the presentation will be several real case success stories of companies that have returned work to the U.S. from offshore suppliers and the lessons that are learned from these real world practitioners.”

“Having Michele Nash-Hoff speak at our design and contract manufacturing show is a perfect fit,” said Jerry Schmidt, President of the Design-2-Part Shows. “Attendees can hear Michele justify bringing work back to the states and then they can walk the show floor and find the high-quality U.S. suppliers they need to solve their challenges.”

“Michele Nash-Hoff is President of ElectroFab Sales, a manufacturers rep agency, and author of Can American Manufacturing Be Saved—Why We Should and How We Can. Her blog articles appear on the Huffington Post and Industry Week magazine’s blog.” For the past two years, “Ms. Nash-Hoff has been speaking on behalf of The Reshoring Initiative, a nonprofit, industry-led organization dedicated to bringing work back to the U.S. from overseas. The Initiative is achieving its goals by helping manufacturers recognize that local production or sourcing may actually reduce their TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of purchased parts and tooling. The Reshoring Initiative was founded by Mr. Harry Moser who was named to Industry Week magazine’s Manufacturing Hall of Fame in 2010 for this work.

Admission to the Southern California Design-2-Part Show is free to qualified industry professionals. For more information or to register for the show, visit www.D2P.com.

If you don’t live in southern California, don’t miss one of the other regional Design-2 Part shows still coming up. The rest of the fall schedule is:

Marlborough, MA            October 30-31

Covington, KY                November 20-21

WESTEC 2013 – October 15-17, 2013 – Los Angeles Convention Center

WESTEC is produced by SME (formerly the Society of Manufacturing Engineering.) Now, SME connects all those who are passionate about making things that improve our world. As a nonprofit organization, SME has served practitioners, companies, educators, government and communities across the manufacturing spectrum for more than 80 years. Through its strategic areas of events, media, membership, training and development, and the SME Education Foundation, SME shares knowledge to advance manufacturing. SME works together to make the future through exciting, interactive face-to-face events such as tradeshows and conferences, SME events serve as the manufacturing industry’s vital conduit. SME creates opportunities for people to showcase innovation, share knowledge, grow their businesses and build relationships

WESTEC has always been the West Coast’s “can’t miss” event, a technology showcase that helped generations of manufacturers grow their businesses. WESTEC is the region’s definitive manufacturing event and returns to the Los Angeles Convention Center Fall 2013 redefined and with renewed commitment to area industry.

The show is a true manufacturer’s think tank where creativity, vision, and strategy join forces to spotlight the promise of groundbreaking products for vital global markets. This is where you can meet experts who can help apply cutting-edge equipment, make sense of lean methods, and manufacture with composites, titanium, or other advanced materials.

WESTEC is where collaboration starts – a place to network, form relationships, and build partnerships. It is where technology takes center-stage, putting new developments, integration, and solutions right into your hands.

WESTEC is a showcase for the latest innovations from the leaders in manufacturing and where you can experience the people, technology and innovation that are redefining the future of manufacturing. Many technology breakthroughs of recent decades were unveiled at WESTEC.

The very latest technologies – from software, cutting tools to multi-tasking machines will be on display from top international equipment manufacturers. Plan to participate in WESTEC by registering at westeconline.com.

Another opportunity for manufacturers in the San Diego region to find local vendors is provided by CONNECT’s Nearsourcing Initiative, which focuses on assisting San Diego companies in need of outsourcing to take a closer look at our region’s local outsourcing cluster. The program includes workshops that educate our region’s innovation entrepreneurs on the benefits of contracting with local manufacturers, including reduced time to market, increased innovation and reduced risk and costs; and to assist San Diego innovation companies in need of outsourcing to Innovate Locally, Grow Globally – to connect and contract with qualified San Diego production resources.

The program ensures that business is not offshored unless necessary and keeps economic growth and job creation in our local region—which can be found in these case studies. The program also includes initiatives to market San Diego’s production capabilities and help local supply chains network, innovate and compete internationally. You can find more details on the program as well as access to the San Diego outsourcing community through The Connectory and the CONNECT Resource Guide.

The CONNECT Nearsourcing Initiative is led by a Steering Committee of Production Cluster leaders including Sharp HealthCare, D&K Engineering, Althea Technologies, Pharmatek Laboratories, Invetech, DD Studio, Leardon Solutions, BioLaurus, Solekai Systems, Clarity Design, the East County Economic Development Council, which owns and operates the Connectory – a database of 5,600 local production companies, the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation and intellectual property experts from Sheppard Mullin and Sughrue Mion.

There will be a Nearsourcing trade show in conjunction with the Connect with CONNECT networking event on October 30, 2013 from 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm at the offices of Knobbe Martens Olsen & Bear, 12790 El Camino Real, San Diego, CA 92130. You may register at http://connect.org/events/

I urge you to take the time to attend one of these events this fall if you are in the San Diego/southern California region. Now is the time to get on the bandwagon early to find local sources to “nearsource” or “reshore” by bringing back manufacturing to America. Hope to see many of you at one of these events!

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Innovation, Manufacturing, Reshoring | 1 Comment »

Protecting Intellectual Property is Critical to our Economy

Tuesday, September 10th, 2013

The U. S. economy has been the innovator of virtually all major technologies developed since World War II. The innovative technologies that American inventors and entrepreneurs have invented and developed have benefitted Americans in all aspects of their lives. American manufacturers have been responsible for more than two-thirds of all private sector R&D that led to these innovative new technologies. More than 90 percent of new patents derive from the manufacturing sector and the closely integrated engineering and technology-intensive services.

Innovation is the hallmark of U. S. manufacturing, and it requires a certain mass of interconnected activities, which like a snowball rolling downhill grows in size as it proceeds towards end users. Substantial R&D is required to keep the innovation ball rolling to ensure more successes than failures.

Manufacturing is an incubator for technology and science, so it is important that R&D be conducted in close proximity to manufacturing plants where innovative ideas can be tested and worker feedback can fuel product innovation.

Innovation and production are intertwined. You need to know how to make a product in order to make it better. “Most innovation does not come from some disembodied laboratory,” said Stephen S. Cohen, co-director of the Berkeley roundtable on the International Economy at the University of California, Berkeley. “In order to innovate in what you make, you have to be pretty good at making – and we are losing that ability.

In his book Great Again:  Revitalizing America’s Entrepreneurial Leadership, Hank Nothhaft, retired CEO of Tessera Technologies, writes that “In our arrogance and our own naiveté, we told ourselves that so long as America did the ‘creative’ work, the inventing, we could let other nations do the ‘grunt’ work – the manufacturing. We did not yet understand that a nation that no longer makes things will eventually forget how to invent them.”

Most cutting edge or break-through technologies are not generated by established, larger companies. They come from the creative innovations of entrepreneurs starting up companies. However, most of these entrepreneurs don’t startup their companies in a vacuum; they are most often started by people who have gained knowledge and experience at existing companies in a technology/product field and leave the company to develop their own innovative new product in that same field.

These entrepreneurs need to have protection for the intellectual property of their new technologies via the patent system in order to raise the investor funds they need to move forward in developing the technology into a marketable, producible end product. Angel investors and venture capital investors invest their monies in a combination of the entrepreneurial team and the innovative, even disruptive technology. If the intellectual property is not secured through a “patent pending” or issued patent, there is nothing in which to invest.

Economist Pat Choate, author of Saving Capitalism: Keeping America Strong, emphasized how important the protection of Intellectual Property is to the future of American manufacturing at the “Making California Thrive” Manufacturing summit last February facilitated by the Coalition for a Prosperous America. He said that the U. S. is the most innovative country in the world and issues more patents than any other country. However, the recent passage of the America Invents Act converting the U. S. from a “first-to-invent” to “first-to-file” is hurting our innovation. Most growth comes from “disruptive” technology developed by inventors/entrepreneurs of small companies, and the “first-to-file” favors large companies that can file a challenge against these small companies in the hopes of bankrupting them to avoid disruptive technology from harming their business.

In the last two decades, the competitive status of U. S. manufacturing has been increasingly challenged by the state-of-the-art technologies being developed by established nations such as Japan, Germany, Korea, and Taiwan. While emerging economies, such as China, are acquiring advanced manufacturing capability through R&D tax incentives and incentives for direct foreign investment, they still rely heavily on counterfeiting, pirating, and theft of American intellectual property to compete unfairly.

In the July 12th article in The Hill, Stephen Ezell, a senior analyst with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, wrote “IP-intensive industries are foundational to the U.S. economy. They contribute over $5.1 trillion in U.S. economic output, accounting for nearly 35 percent of U.S. GDP in 2010, as the U.S. Department of Commerce found in its report Intellectual Property and the U.S. Economy: Industries in Focus. At the same time, IP-intensive industries exported more than $1 trillion worth of goods and services in 2011, accounting for approximately 74 percent of total U.S. exports that year, and supported at least 40 million jobs, or 20 percent of all U.S. private sector employment.”
He criticized the testimony that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) provided to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations regarding Insights Gained from Efforts to Quantify the Effects of Counterfeit and Pirated Goods in the U.S. Economy because it ignored previous reports of the International Trade Commission and the IP Commission.

Instead of providing new data, the GAO report laments the fact that “quantifying the economic impact of counterfeit and pirated goods on the U.S. economy is challenging primarily because of the lack of available data on the extent and value of counterfeit trade.”

He pointed out that the ITC report, “China: Effects of Intellectual Property Infringement and Indigenous Innovation Policies on the U.S. Economy, estimated that in 2009 alone Chinese theft or infringement of U.S. intellectual property cost almost one million U.S. jobs and caused $48.2 billion in U.S. economic losses due to lost sales, royalties, or license fees. The report found that, ‘Of the $48.2 billion in total reported losses in 2009, approximately $36.6 billion (75.9 percent) was attributable to lost sales, while the remaining $11.6 billion was attributable to a combination of lost royalty and license payments.’”

He added that the more recent “IP Commission Report, a report from the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, found that the impact of international IP theft on the U.S. economy exceeds $320 billion annually, comparable to the level of U.S. exports to Asia.”

On June 20, 2013, the White House released the 92-page 2013 Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement. The press release states, “Since the first Joint Strategic Plan was released in 2010, the Administration has made tremendous progress in intellectual property enforcement. Coordination and efficiency of the Federal agencies has improved; U.S law enforcement has increased significantly and we have successfully worked with Congress to improve our legislation. We have increased our focus on trade secret theft and economic espionage that give foreign governments and companies an unfair competitive advantage by stealing our technology. We have pressed our trading partners to do more to improve enforcement of all types of intellectual property.”

It’s outrageous that the plan takes 92 pages to describe actions that are either the same as actions in the 2010 plan or are so ridiculously vague or redundant that they are virtually worthless, such as:

  • Support small and medium-size enterprises in foreign markets.
  • Coordinate international capacity-building and training.
  • Improve transparency in intellectual property policymaking.
  • Examine labor conditions.
  • Assess the economic impact of intellectual property-intensive industries.
  • Use legal software.
  • Educate authors on “fair use” copyright doctrine

What inventors and entrepreneurs need most is enforcement of current laws. Thus, the most useful actions in the new plan are:

  • Improve IPR enforcement efficacy by leveraging advanced technology and expertise.
  • Increase focus on counterfeits shipped through international mail and work with express carriers.
  • Evaluate the enforcement process of exclusion orders issued by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC).
  • Promote Enforcement of U.S. Intellectual Property Rights through Trade Policy Tools

I seriously question whether this plan will enhance protecting America’s Intellectual Property. In addition, how will we know if it is successful if we don’t have current data on the extent of Intellectual Property theft and the damage it is causing to the American economy?

I agree with Mr. Ezell that the above plan “must be effectively implemented and the federal government needs to make it clear that it will no longer tolerate foreign entities counterfeiting or pirating U.S. goods, stealing trade secrets, copying digital content, or otherwise taking U.S. property without paying for it.”

Since innovation and creativity are part of the foundation of our country’s economy, we need to have effective enforcement of intellectual property rights to promote economic growth, ensure our global competitiveness, and protect the health and safety of our citizens. If we want to remain at the cutting edge of technology and innovation and maintain the critical mass of our manufacturing industry, we also need to protect the key to our future security as a nation and keep the R&D that fuels innovation and the subsequent manufacture of products within the United States.

 

Tags:, ,
Posted in Innovation, Manufacturing | No Comments »

Made in USA Products Succeed in Home Décor Market

Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013

When ABC began the “Made in America” series on the World News with Diane Sawyer on Monday, February 28, 2011, the ABC team examined three rooms of the home of John and Ana Ursy in Dallas, Texas and removed all foreign-made products. The result was a virtually empty house – no beds, no tables, no chairs, no couches, and no lamps. Only the kitchen sink, a vase, a candle, and some pottery remained.

If the ABC team conducted the same examination today, they might find more Made in USA products. Every season, more and more Made in USA products are available in retail stores, such as Home Depot and Lowes. Consumers are choosing to buy Made in USA products, and retailers are paying attention. Even Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, announced that it would increase sourcing of American-made products by $50 billion over the next 10 years.

One company was ahead of the trend by providing Made in USA carpet products to the home decor market ? FLOR, owned by $1.1 billion Atlanta-based textile manufacturer, Interface Inc.

In my recent interview with FLOR President Greg Colando, he said, “In 2003, I was requested by Interface founder Ray Anderson to start a company that would use 100% recycled material to make carpet tiles for the consumer market.”

Colando continued, “We started FLOR with three employees in a small office on the west side of Chicago. Our strategy was to grow this brand by word-of-mouth. We sought out design influencers (bloggers, designers, design celebrities) to introduce them to the product, let them fall in love with it, and then spread the word through their own influence.”

We weren’t able to start off with 100% materials in 2003 as they just weren’t available. It was a practice that evolved over many years. First, we committed to the idea that carpet could be 100% sustainable. Back 10-15 years ago, it seemed unattainable to be able to make carpet using recycled materials as you drove through neighborhoods and saw rolled up carpeting at the end of driveways headed for landfills.

We began the process of working with our vendors and demanding they supply us with the materials we were seeking. And here we are, about to celebrate our 10-year anniversary, and our entire line consists of 100% recycled nylon face fibers as it is now possible to get 100% recycled nylon yarn from suppliers. We have some unique texture products, like Fedora (a best seller) where each square you purchase removes five plastic water bottles from a landfill and diverts it into our carpet.”

Today, FLOR is headquartered in Chicago, IL, but their carpet tiles are finished in their manufacturing plant in La Grange, GA. The company has grown from the original three founding employees to more than 100. From their distribution center near Atlanta, their employees are bringing a smarter solution for floor covering to the market place to every store in all the major markets in the United States.

Instead of downsizing during the recession of 2007-2009, Mr. Colando said, “We actually grew our business during the recession. A new idea/product combined with a large home/design market place provided a great deal of room for growth, even as the rest of the world around us seemed to be crumbling. One wonderful asset we had was our ability to trim down spend while increasing efficiency and staying flexible. Now, we are a rapidly growing business, opening 20 of our own stores in the past couple years.”

FLOR’s products are an innovative system of carpet squares that you assemble to create custom area rugs, runners, or wall-to-wall designs of any shape or size. Using FLOR’s patented adhesives, you connect the carpet squares together and not to your floor. In addition to dozens of patterns and colors of carpet tiles that you can design and assemble yourself, FLOR offers 75 pre-designed combinations of rugs ranging from simple two-tile mats, iconic button rugs, to unique shapes such as the Hop-Scotch rug and Faux Hide rug.

Mr. Colando said, “Our Georgia manufacturing plant is not an automated manufacturing plant using robotics. It is a simplistic “pick and pack” product where members of the FLOR team work hard each and every day to put forth the best possible end customer experience. The majority of our orders ship the same day, which shows the efficiency of the operation.”

“Pick and pack” means that an employee selects the carpet design styles and colors to fill a customer’s specific order and packs them in the shipping box. FLOR doesn’t manufacture the actual carpet tiles; they are manufactured in traditional rolls at one of Interface’s domestic plants and shipped to FLOR, where they are cut into carpet squares and stored in the warehouse by color and design.

FLOR’s becoming a success as an environmentally responsible company, making products for the domestic market in the USA was the result of one man’s vision ?Ray Anderson, who founded Interface Inc. in 1973 to produce the first free-lay carpet tiles in America. Interface is now one of the world’s largest producers of modular commercial floor coverings, with sales in 110 countries and manufacturing facilities on four continents. Interface manufactures carpet for the commercial market ? corporate, healthcare, education, retail, hospitality and government. While Interface manufactures carpet in Australia, England, Holland, Shanghai, China, and Thailand for markets in those countries and regions to eliminate shipping products across the ocean, 90% of the carpet for the domestic market is Made in USA.

Anderson first turned his focus toward the environment in 1994 when he read The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken, and also Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, seeking inspiration for a speech to an internal task force on the company’s environmental vision. Hawken argues that the industrial system is destroying the planet and only industry leaders are powerful enough to stop it. Anderson made a decision to transform the company into using recycled materials wherever possible to become a sustainable company.

He made a promise to have the company eliminate any negative impact it may have on the environment by the year 2020 through the redesign of processes and products, the pioneering of new technologies, and efforts to reduce or eliminate waste and harmful emissions while increasing the use of renewable materials and sources of energy. Interface now leads the industry in environmental achievement and the exploration of environmentally efficient products and processes.

In 2009, Anderson said, “Fifteen years later, we’re only halfway there. But we’ve saved over $400 million, which has more than financed everything else that we’ve done — the R&D, the capital expenditures, the process changes, employee training, the whole ball of wax.

Interface’s Mission Zero Progress has been remarkable. The use of recycled and biobased materials has gone up from 1% in 1996 to 49% in 2012. The water use (gallons per square yard) has gone down from 1.9 gallons in 1996 to .4 in 2012. The waste to landfill from Interface’s carpet products has gone down from 12.5 million pounds in 1996 to 2.0 million pounds in 2012. The Greenhouse Gas Emissions (pounds of CO2e per square yard) from Interface’s carpet factories dropped from 2.8 pounds to 1.6 pounds.

In other words, “Between 1996 and 2008, the company cut its net greenhouse gas emissions by 71 percent (in absolute tons), yet sales increased by two-thirds and earnings doubled.”

Anderson chronicled the Mission Zero journey in two books, Mid-Course Correction: Toward a Sustainable Enterprise: The Interface Model (1998) and Confessions of a Radical Industrialist: Profits, People, Purpose: Doing Business by Respecting the Earth (2009). The latter was released in paperback as Business Lessons from a Radical Industrialist in 2011.

As we can see, one man with a vision can have a huge impact. Anderson’s bold vision and ambitious goal has already accomplished things not thought to be possible, but it is a goal that demands constant improvement and attention. The management of Interface and FLOR are committed to continue with the ambitious sustainability goal to achieve a zero environmental footprint by 2020.

Unfortunately, Ray Anderson died on August 8, 2011 after a 20-month battle with cancer. On July 28, 2012, Anderson’s family re-launched the Ray C. Anderson Foundation with a new purpose. The Foundation’s mission is to create a brighter, sustainable world through the funding of innovative projects that promote and advance the concepts of sustainable production and consumption.

Interface and FLOR stand in sharp contrast to many other American companies that have offshored manufacturing to China and other parts of Asia to escape what they perceive as onerous environmental regulations in the U. S., reduce labor costs, and increase profits. If Interface and FLOR can be financially successful American companies in highly competitive markets while exercising environmental responsibility in the conduct of their business and supporting Made in USA products, they should be rewarded by consumers with more business.

 

Posted in Cleantech, Environment, Innovation, Manufacturing | No Comments »

Innovative Products Featured at Annual San Diego Inventors Forum Contest

Wednesday, June 19th, 2013

On June 13, 2013, over 100 people gathered at the conference center of AMN Healthcare for the annual inventors contest of the San Diego Inventors Forum demonstrating that innovation is alive and well in the U. S. Ten contestants were selected out of 28 applicants to present their latest inventions for the audience to pick the top three inventions. The products ranged from those that make cooking in the kitchen easy to items to make smart phones more functional and easy-to-use products that provide portable solar power and feed the world. Applicants were limited to those that had attended the Inventors Forum three or more times in the past year and had an invention that was either already patented or was “patent pending” in addition to having a  working model or being ready for sale to the marketplace.
Adrian Pelkus won the first place prize of $1,000 for his patented O2MislyTM CWT, Chronic Wound Treatment System, which uses Vaporous Hyperoxia Therapy, oxygen infused with a vapor to deliver an anti-microbial to the affected area. Diabetic foot ulcers, bedsores, and other wounds that have not healed in as long as several years are being healed in weeks. In clinical trials, nearly every patient showed 50% wound reduction in two weeks. Treatment is now available on a private pay basis in San Diego, but will be expanded nationwide in the future. For further information, email Adrian at apelkus@iyiatechnologies.com.

Phyllis Davis won the second place prize of $500 for the patent pending Portable Farms™ Aquaponics Systems’ Modular Aquaponics Systems. Aquaponics University (AU) was created to teach individuals the skills, procedures and techniques for used for growing chemical-free food and fish in a system with minimal use of power, water and labor. Aquaponics University (AU) offers the Portable Farms™ Aquaponics System Course© that teaches individuals how to grow chemical-free food and fish in a closed-loop system. After completing the course, participants will receive one Portable Farms Kit to be able to build their own Portable Farms™ Aquaponics System that feeds up to eight people forever. For further information, contact Phyllis at pdavis@aquaponicsuniversity.com.

Jon Doogan won the $250 third place prize for the Aculief Wearable Acupressure that was launched at the Natural Products Expo West in March 2013. Aculief is a patented wearable acupressure device for active lifestyles, designed for anyone suffering from tension, health imbalance or discomfort. Aculief applies pressure to the LI4 acupressure point, located between the thumb and forefinger. The LI4 has been used for thousands of years in traditional Chinese medicine to relieve tension and to promote your body’s natural flow of energy. Aculief is currently available through their online store, www.amazon.com, www.Pharmaca.com or in Pharmaca’s 24 retail locations throughout the US.

Other presenters (in no particular order) were:
William Benn for his patented SunLight Harvester ? a mobile, renewable energy solar electric generator and power storage system. It is designed for southwest Sunbelt residents living in the reduced living space of townhomes and condominiums with patios, duplexes, with small backyards, and homes without a south facing roof that want an affordable, clean, and environmentally friendly renewable energy source of electricity. For further information, contact Ben at wmpb72y@gmail.com.

Randall J. Kendis for his patent pending iPhone Hat Cradle ?  a removable cradle to hold an iPhone or other Smartphone on a hat with a brim to provide a platform for hands-free, real-time video transmission and recording without hindering free movement and mobility. The cradle can be quickly switched from one hat to another. For further information, contact Randall at rkendis@gmail.com.

Sia Malek for his patent pending Window Blind Remote Control ? a simple battery-operated device that will turn your current horizontal or vertical window blinds into a remote controlled system. It takes only a couple of minutes to install and can be maintained and relocated easily. For further information, contact Sia at siamalek@hotmail.com.

Judith Balian for her patented system to promote positive thinking. The system acts as a gentle personal trainer to help people become aware of their thoughts and to use the law of attraction to their advantage. While many people know about the power of using affirmations and intentions, few are able to control their wandering minds to harness the greatest potential of this natural law. This system helps users develop the habit of positive thinking to create what they want in live. For further information, contact Judith at jbalian@excoveries.com.

George Octavio Flint for his patent pending Uni-Mattress ? three air mattresses in one ? twin, full, and queen so you can fit the right sized mattress into your available space. For further information, contact George at goflint@gmail.com.

Joshua D. Mackenroth for his Gravity±Seat ? is a revolutionary new bicycle suspension seat post that provides greater control and better handling for a faster, smoother ride.  The radical design is far superior to any of the off-road suspension seat posts in the market today. It is also the first suspension seat post in the world intended for the road bike market as well. Gravity±Seat is true crossover technology that lowers the center of gravity for road bikes and increases the amount of usable suspension travel for off-road bikes. The patented reverse angle design allows the seat to travel downward to lower the center of gravity while the damping shock absorbs sharp impacts. This gives riders the ability to drop down and back toward the rear of the bicycle through rough sections and steep down hills rather than being thrown over the handlebars. The end result is better handling, better traction, faster cornering, and a smoother ride. For further information, contact Joshua at sdlawyerhelp@gmail.com.
Gene McGuinness for his Wave – Fat-Free Cooking aids designed to form and cook taco shells, tortilla chips and bowls without any fat, oil, or grease in your own microwave. For further information, contact Gene at president1956@gmail.com.

If you are ready to turn that idea into a product, let us help you get started at the San Diego Inventors Forum. You will get motivated by hearing successful local San Diego inventors speak how they developed their marketable products. You will be able to network with fellow creative people and get guidance and encouragement to take your first or next steps necessary to turn your ideas into a reality. You will have the opportunity to meet “mentor” inventors and professionals in many fields. First-time attendees are invited to introduce themselves and briefly describe their idea/invention. At the end of the meeting, the “who needs who” period  provides the opportunity to express a need for help with such issues business structure, licensing, marketing, funding, legal and engineering questions.

We members of the SDIF steering committee invite all innovators, inventors, engineers, artists and start-up entrepreneurs to attend our monthly meetings, held the second Thursday of the month from 6:30pm to 7pm for networking and 7pm to 8:30pm for the meeting at the conference center of AMN Healthcare in San Diego.

Now that the annual contest is over, the 2013-2014 topics schedule begins again in August. August’s topic will be “Innovation and Entrepreneurship” – harnessing your creative mind, and September will continue with “IP 101” – when, why and how to search for patents, trademarks and copyrights. During the course of the year, topics covered include marketing, licensing, branding, networking, and funding. I will be giving my annual presentation in the fall on “Manufacturing 101” – how to select the right manufacturing processes and sources to make your product. For further information, the San Diego Inventors Forum can be reached at http://www.sdinventors.org or by calling Forum president Adrian Pelkus at 760-591-9608.

 

Tags:, ,
Posted in Innovation | No Comments »

Could California Manufacturing Thrive Again?

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

On February 14, about 135 business, civic, academic, and labor leaders met at the conference facilities of AMN Healthcare for the “Manufacturing in California – Making California Thrive” economic summit. Comments to welcome attendees were made in turn by San Diego City Councilman Mark Kersey, Assembly member Marie Waldron, Dale Bankhead from Assembly member Toni Atkins office, and Senator Mark Wyland.

Then, Michael Stumo, president of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, provided an overview of the schedule for the day that included an overview of manufacturing in California, a panel of local manufacturers, a panel of national presenters, and breakout sessions after lunch.

I provided the overview of California manufacturing in which I briefly discussed the history of manufacturing in California that I wrote about in a previous blog and pointed out that even though California is perceived as bad for manufacturing, it is the 8th largest market in world and ranks first in manufacturing for both jobs and output. Manufacturing in California accounts for 11.7% of Gross State Product and 9% of workforce. California leads the nation in monies spent on R&D, and California companies received over 50% of all Venture Capital dollars invested in the U. S. in 2011. California high-tech exports also ranked first nationwide, totaling $48 billion in 2011.

The major manufacturing industries are shown by the following chart:

Besides the great weather, California also has world-famous research institutions and research universities, a skilled, educated workforce, a large pool of inventors/entrepreneurs, and strong networks of “angel” investors and venture capitalists. California inventors and entrepreneurs are supported by more than 20 business incubators throughout the state, including two incubator facilities in San Diego – EvoNexus and the San Diego Technology Incubator, as well as the incubator-without-walls, CONNECT’s Springboard program.

In addition, California has 40 Enterprise Zones throughout the state, two of which are in San Diego’s south county. Enterprise Zone companies are eligible for substantial tax credits:

  • Hiring Credits – Firms can earn $37,440 or more in state tax credits for each qualified employee hired
  • Up to 100% Net Operating Loss (NOL) carry-forward for up to 15 years under most circumstances.
  • Sales tax credits on purchases of up to $20 million per year of qualified machinery and machinery parts;
  • Up-front expensing of certain depreciable property
  • Unused tax credits can be applied to future tax years
  • Enterprise Zone companies can earn preference points on state contracts.

There are also 17 Foreign Trade Zones (FTZs) in California that are sites in or near a U.S. Customs port of entry where foreign and domestic goods are considered to be in international trade. Goods can be brought into zone without formal Customs entry or without incurring Customs duties/excise taxes until they are imported into the U. S. FTZs are intended to promote U.S. participation in trade and commerce by eliminating or reducing the unintended costs associated with U.S. trade laws

Of course, no overview would be complete without mentioning the disadvantages of manufacturing in California. In the Small Business Entrepreneur Council Survival Index of 2011, California ranks 46th for its business climate because of the following:

  • Highest personal income & capital gains taxes
  • Highest corporate income & capital gains taxes
  • Highest gas and diesel taxes
  • High state minimum wage
  • High electric utility costs
  • High workers’ compensation costs
  • More stringent Cal OSHA & Cal EPA regulations
  • Stringent Air Quality Monitoring District rules
  • Large number of health insurance mandates

As a result, California has lost over 500,000 manufacturing jobs since the year 2001 as shown by the chart below.

No state, county, or city agency keeps track of the number of manufacturing companies leaving California, but there are frequent anecdotal stories in the news. Of course, everyone had seen or heard one of the ads by Texas Governor Rick Perry to woo California companies to relocate to Texas, as well as the fact that he was in California that very week to meet with some California companies.

I then moderated a panel of the following local manufacturers, who gave their viewpoints of the challenges of doing business in California:

  • Karl Friedrich Haarburger – VP, Solar Energy Industrial Operations, SOITEC
  • Neal Nordstrom – COO, PureForge
  • Rick Urban – COO, Quality Controlled Manufacturing, Inc.
  • Paul Brown – CFO, The Wheat Group
  • Craig Anderson – EHS Director, Solar Turbines, Inc.

Their comments provided examples of most of the above-cited disadvantages of doing business in California with particular emphasis on the problems of raising taxes retroactively in the last election by the passage of Proposition 30. Neal Nordstrom said, “It isn’t just the increase in income taxes and sales taxes, it’s the cumulative effect of all of the taxes and the uncertainty of what is happening next.” Businesses need to be able to have some certainty in their planning, so passing retroactive taxes makes planning for the future difficult and hurts their profitability greatly.

Mr. Anderson commented that there biggest problem was caused by the passage of AB 32. He stated, “The technology to comply with AB 32 does not currently exist, so there is great uncertainty as to whether Solar Turbines will be able to comply with the law by the deadline for compliance.”

Greg Autry, School of Business and Economics, Chapman University, led off the national panel with the topic of Trade Policy. The U. S. had a trade deficit $559.8 billion in 2011, of which over half ($295.4 billion) was with China. Every trade agreement signed in the past 20 years has resulted in an increase trade deficit with our trading partners. The U. S. already has an increased trade deficit with Korea and Columbia from the recently signed trade agreements. He said, “States need to stop trying to “poach” companies from other states and work together against our common adversary, China. States cannot compete against another country where the government is subsidizing manufacturing companies to take control of markets.” Mr. Autry showed a video he had taped during a visit to China in which an employee of Foxconn stated that the Chinese government had provided the land and built the facility where the iPads and iPhone are being manufactured without cost to Foxconn, as well as covering all of the expenses for running the facility for three years. He also showed a video interview with an executive of CODA Automotive Inc. that has opened its HQ in Los Angeles and claims to be making their electric car in the U. S. when, in fact, they are importing the “glider” (a car without the drive train) from China. Miles Automotive partnered with China-based Hafei Saibao Electric Motor Car and Qingyuan Electric Vehicle Co. to establish Coda Automotive as an affiliate company. Mr. Autry opined that federal tax rebates should not be going to purchase an electric car for essentially a Chinese import to the detriment of American car manufacturers like General Motors.

Pat Choate – Economist; Author, Saving Capitalism: Keeping America Strong, covered the importance of the protection of Intellectual Property to the future of American manufacturing. He said that the U. S. is the most innovative country in the world and issues more patents than any other country. However, the recent passage of the America Invents Act converting the U. S. from a “first-to-invent” to “first-to-file” is hurting our innovation. Most growth comes from “disruptive” technology developed by inventors/entrepreneurs of small companies, and the “first-to-file favors large companies that can file a challenge against these small companies in the hopes of bankrupting them to avoid disruptive technology from harming their business. The length of time for the Patent Office to issue a patent has increased from an average of 18 months to 36 months, which is hurting startup companies. The share of patents granted to U. S. residents and small entities has dropped several percentage points since 2007.1988.  He concluded by saying that the constitutionality of the America Invents Act is being challenged, and he hopes that it will be deemed unconstitutional.

Michael Stumo – CEO, Coalition for a Prosperous America, described the math about how a consumption tax could reduce the domestic tax burden, include imports in our tax base, and narrow the trade deficit, increase U.S. production, and fund reductions in the income tax while maintaining progressivity. He explained that our national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) equals of Consumption plus Investment plus Government Procurement plus Net Exports (Total exports minus Total Imports). Every one of our trading partners (150 countries) has a form of consumption tax, including value added taxes (VATs), with an average 17% level. These countries rebate these taxes on their exports, while the U. S. does not add a tax on its imports. The taxes are “border adjustable” because they act as a tariff on our goods sent to them and charged the VAT. This has created our more than $500 billion trade deficit with our trading partners, $298 billion with China alone. CPA advocates changes in U. S. trade policy to address this unfairness which tremendously distorts trade flows.

Thea Lee – Deputy Chief of Staff, President’s Office at AFL-CIO spoke passionately on the need to have a national manufacturing strategy that will create good paying jobs for American workers. Key points that she made were: We need to have a longer-term goal of what kind of country we want to be and how to achieve it. It will require some strategic investment in infrastructure. We need to figure out what kind of trade we want and what other countries are doing. Having an ideological position that free trade is good when other countries are pursuing mercantilism is harmful. We need to be responsive to what other countries are doing. We need to have a competitive trade policy. The ultimate goal is not to have more free trade but more prosperity at home. We need to get back into a job creation policy. We haven’t done trade policy very well, and we need to rethink our trade policies. We don’t need more dopey free trade agreements (taken from notes but not verbatim quotes.)

After lunch, the attendees were split into three groups for the breakout session, in which five issues were discussed and voted against each other, one pair at a time, to determine the top two issues. The five issues were:

  • Trade Reform
  • Tax Reform
  • Intellectual Property
  • Regulatory Reform
  • Manufacturing Strategy

After voting, the groups reconvened to share the outcome of their voting. The top two issues voted as most critical to be addressed were:  Regulatory Reform and Manufacturing Strategy. Regulatory Reform was chosen as the top issue by all three groups because they felt manufacturers needed to have their immediate “pain” alleviated before other issues could be considered. A manufacturing strategy was deemed the second most important issue because if you have a strategy that supports manufacturing, it will encompass intellectual property protection and trade reform. Attendees were invited to sign up to participate in a Task Force to be formed. I will be chairing the Task Force, so please contact me at michele@savingusmanufacturing.com if you would like to participate.

If our elected representatives will work with business, civic, academic, and labor leaders, I believe we can make manufacturing in California thrive again and once more be the “Golden State” of opportunity.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Economy, Innovation, Manufacturing, Trade Policy | No Comments »

Indiana Manufacturers Have Weathered the Storm of the Great Recession

Tuesday, December 18th, 2012

According to results of the 2012 Indiana Manufacturing Survey: “Halftime” for Indiana Manufacturing, Indiana manufacturers have weathered the storm of the Great Recession and are well positioned to compete in the future., The report, commissioned by Katz, Sapper & Miller certified public accounting firm, was conducted by Scott A. Brown, Partner, Katz, Sapper & Miller, LLP in conjunction with Mark Frohlich, associate professor of operations management and Steven Jones, associate professor of finance  on the faculty of the Kelley School of Business Indianapolis, Indiana University.

This report has tracked Indiana manufacturing for six years, from the end of the economic boom through the Great Recession to the present. The authors “view the past year as a ‘halftime’ break for Indiana manufacturing after what proved to be an incredibly difficult first half.”

The vast majority of companies surveyed (82%) responded at the company level, while 10% are individual plants and 7% are divisions of larger organizations. Privately owned companies represent 87% of respondents and the other 13% are publicly traded companies. The average number of employees is 306, and the largest organization has 8,000 employees.

About 40% of companies rely on job shop-type production, and 41% use batch manufacturing. Very few companies operate assembly lines (8%) or continuous flow processes (11%), both of which are capital intensive and used to produce relatively standardized, high-volume items.

The three largest industry groups represented are industrial equipment (19%), automotive (19%), and aerospace and defense (10%). Another 18% of respondents are almost evenly distributed between high-tech (5%), healthcare (6%), and furniture/home goods (7%).

In the past four years since the financial crisis of late 2008, “manufacturers have faced challenges ranging from credit crunches and supplier bankruptcies to slumping consumer demand, soaring energy costs, and relentless foreign competition.” The report chronicles that “in 2008-09, Indiana manufacturers were mainly focused on cost-cutting and economic survival. By 2010-11, targeted investments aimed at growth began to reappear on the agendas of many manufacturers.” Now, four years later, “a significant majority now report that their business is either ‘healthy’ or ‘stable,’ with tougher times behind them” and “investment for growth is a priority for many companies around the state,” while “almost three out of every four manufacturers surveyed are investing for growth.”

“From a financial perspective, I think it small- to medium-sized manufacturers have made it through the Great Recession, and they’re starting to recover,” said Jones. “That is revealed in the survey responses indicating there’s less concern about working capital management and renewed focus on investment strategy, rather than cost cutting.”

“One in 10 companies surveyed plan to open new manufacturing facilities in Indiana over the next two years, and 44 percent rate their financial performance as “healthy,” a significant increase from last year’s response of 30 percent.”

The survey did find that net profit margins increased more for firms that introduced new products sometime in the two years prior. In the 2012 survey findings, the companies introducing new products increased to 44% (up from 38% in 2011), and they saw a 24% improvement in net profit margin (down from 26% in 2011.

According to survey 2012 survey results, business strategies have changed from 2011. In 2011, “the two most important underlying dimensions were superior product design and fast and reliable delivery along with superior customer service.” In 2012, “superior quality and lower selling prices have emerged as the two most important underlying dimensions on which manufacturers are differentiating their businesses.”

The authors “research reveals three key ways strategies are shifting as we move beyond the Great Recession toward a new era that is likely to be even more competitive:”

  1. Keep focused on the customer – strategies increasingly feature superior quality and lower prices, along with superior product design and customer service.
  2. Don’t underestimate the importance of technology – leading-edge technologies are playing a critical role in advancing these companies in conjunction with process improvement programs such as Lean and Six Sigma, advanced automation, and smart manufacturing technologies.
  3. Collaboration remains critical – partnerships and collaboration with up- and downstream customers and suppliers in the supply chain

Frohlich and Jones recommend, “Indiana manufacturing companies stay focused on the customer, avoid underestimating the importance of technology and know that collaboration remains critical.”

“These results indicate a reason to be optimistic about the manufacturing sector and jobs investment in the State of Indiana,” said Jones.

A slightly higher percentage of companies are “on-shoring” (aka “reshoring”) manufacturing back into the United States. When asked if they expect to relocate or onshore any manufacturing back to the United States during 2012-13, or alternatively, do they plan on relocating, or offshoring, any production outside the United States during 2012-2013, 9% indicated they intend to onshore and 8% intend to offshore. The top four reasons why companies are “reshoring” were:  better control over production (60%), proximity to customers and main markets (50%), closer to key suppliers (40%), and reduce total “landed” costs; i.e., customs/duties, transportation, warehousing, etch (40%). The main reasons for offshoring manufacturing out of the United States are:  lower offshore labor costs and proximity to customers in new markets.

“What now are recognized as systematic errors in offshoring over the past 10-15 years were a lot of mistakes based on myopic financial decision making,” said Jones. “Firms made offshoring decisions assuming exchange rates wouldn’t change, which is wholly unrealistic in currency markets. Many made these financial decisions using only the data in front of them. Additionally, the real cost of labor has gone up in China. All of this represents what, in retrospect, may be an excessive amount of offshoring in the previous decade.”

The survey revealed that the main reasons for Indiana’s competitive edge include:

  • Better access to new technologies
  • Better control over production
  • Locations closer to customers, markets and suppliers
  • Great accounting and auditing oversight

The report states, “The major remaining concern for the state is having a trained workforce that is qualified to pursue advanced manufacturing strategies.”

“These results clearly indicate a growing concern about access to an adequately trained Hoosier workforce, more so than in past years,” the report reads. “Consistent with the previous results indicating growing concerns about worker training, only 30 percent of respondents view Indiana’s workforce as a competitive advantage for the state.”

The authors conclude that “While Indiana’s manufacturers still face strong global competition, their practices and products are beginning to permeate all elements of operations; opening up new markets and sources of demand; driving innovation; and even changing industry cost structures.”

This report shows where Indiana’s manufacturers are right now, but the question is what to do next? The report indicates “a strong sense among Indiana’s manufacturers that execution is now the challenge to bringing about the new era of manufacturing. Confidence among business leaders about their progress toward this new era is strong, and their companies are taking concrete steps towards improving manufacturing…While today’s business environment provides a multitude of new challenges to manage, it also offers significant opportunities for those who can master its dynamics.”

The survey found that a new manufacturing era is on the horizon, and “there is widespread agreement about what the next era of manufacturing will look like. It is one where manufacturing is not only a separate strategic initiative, but also something fully integrated into the strategy and operations of a company. For example, manufacturers will need to develop a broader sense of what value creation means to customers as a whole.”

The underlying tone in this year’s report is that “the next five years could well determine not only the fate of some firms, but also, in significant ways, the success of Indiana and that of our country in the global economy for years to come…Manufacturing can and should continue to thrive if the right policies and strategies are pursued. Real and fundamental changes are continuing to take place across manufacturing in all kinds of capabilities.”

The authors conclude that “the message is clear: Indiana (and American) manufacturing has survived a tough first half. Now it must move forward to remain competitive in the future.”

This report is another example of how American manufacturers can survive and even grow and prosper in the face of global competition. The companies doing the best have implemented many of the recommendations contained in the chapter ? “What can manufacturers do to save themselves? ? in my book, Can American Manufacturing be Saved? Why we should and how we can. Innovative new products, fast, reliable delivery, superior customer service in conjunction with applying the principles and tools of Lean and Six Sigma are a few of the suggestions from this chapter. I encourage everyone to read the new 2012 edition of my book to find out what you can do as a manufacturer to grow and succeed, what national policies need to be changed and implemented to foster success of this critical sector of our economy, and what you can do as an individual to save American manufacturing.

 

 

Posted in Innovation, Manufacturing, Reshoring, Training | No Comments »

Chinese Innovation Mercantilism is Hurting American Manufacturers

Tuesday, December 11th, 2012

On Wednesday, December 5, 2012, Robert D. Atkinson, President of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), testified before the House Science Committee Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight in a hearing on “The Impact of International Technology Transfer on American Research and Development.” His testimony was based on his book, Innovation Economics: The Race for Global Advantage (Yale University Press, 2012) and the ITIF report, “Enough is Enough:  Confronting Chinese Innovation Mercantilism,” released February 2012.

Atkinson began his testimony by stating, “A nation’s investments in research and development (R&D) are vital to its ability to develop the next-generation technologies, products, and services that keep a country and its firms competitive in global markets. Until recently, corporate R&D was generally not very mobile, certainly not in comparison to manufacturing. But in a “flat world” companies can increasingly locate R&D activities anywhere skilled researchers are located…. the United States has seen its relative competitive advantage in R&D and advanced technology industries decline. While the United States still leads the world in aggregate R&D dollars invested, on a per-capita basis it is falling behind.”

He testified that the “decline in America’s innovative edge is due to a number of factors, not the least of which are failures of federal policy, such as an unwillingness to make permanent and expand the R&D tax credit, limitations on high-skill immigration, and stagnant federal funding for R&D. But the decline is also related to unfair practices by other nations that collectively ITIF has termed as ‘innovation mercantilism.’”

The ITIF report cited above states that these policies “include currency manipulation, relatively high tariffs (three times higher than U.S. tariffs), and tax incentives for exports.” In addition, “some policies help Chinese firms while discriminating against foreign establishments in China. These policies include “discriminatory government procurement; controls on foreign purchases designed to force technology transfer to China; land grants and rent subsidies to Chinese-owned firms; preferential loans from banks; tax incentives for Chinese-owned firms; cash subsidies; benefits to state-owned enterprises; generous export financing; government-sanctioned monopolies; a weak and discriminatory patent system; joint-venture requirements; forced technology transfer; intellectual property theft; cyber-espionage to steal intellectual property (IP); domestic technology standards; direct discrimination against foreign firms; limits on imports and sales by foreign firms; onerous regulatory certification requirements; and limiting exports of critical materials in order to deny foreign firms key inputs.”

The report explains that “in the last decade China has accumulated $3.2 trillion worth of foreign exchange reserves and now enjoys the world’s largest current account balance. In 2011, it ran a $276.5 billion trade surplus with the United States. This ‘accomplishment’ stems largely from the fact that China is practicing economic mercantilism on an unprecedented scale. China seeks not merely competitive advantage, but absolute advantage. In other words, China’s strategy is to win in virtually all industries, especially advanced technology products and services… China’s policies represent a departure from traditional competition and international trade norms. Autarky [a policy of national self-sufficiency], not trade, defines China’s goal. As such China’s economic strategy consists of two main objectives: 1) develop and support all industries that can expand exports, especially higher value-added ones, and reduce imports; 2) and do this in a way that ensures that Chinese-owned firms win.”

The report states that “because China is so large and because its distortive mercantilist policies are so extensive, these policies have done significant damage to the United States and other economies…The theft of intellectual property and forced technology transfer reduce revenues going to innovators, making it more difficult for them to reinvest in R&D. The manipulation of standards and other import restrictions balkanizes global markets, keeping them smaller than they otherwise would be, thereby raising global production costs…if Chinese policies continue to be based on absolute advantage and mercantilism…the results will be more of the same: the loss of U.S. industrial and high-tech output, and the jobs and GDP growth that go with it.”

Chinese mercantilist policies are unprecedented in their scope and size. Atkinson testified, “A principal arrow in China’s innovation mercantilist quiver is to force requirements on foreign companies with respect to intellectual property, technology transfer, or domestic sourcing of production as a condition of market access. While China’s accession agreement to the WTO contains rules forbidding it from tying foreign direct investment to requirements to transfer technology to the country, the rules are largely ignored.”

He added, “Rather than doing the hard work to build its domestic technology industries, or better yet focus on raising productivity in low-producing Chinese industries, China decided it would be much easier and faster simply to take the technology from foreign companies… China’s government unabashedly forces multinational companies in technology-based industries—including IT, air transportation, power generation, high-speed rail, agricultural sciences, and electric automobiles—to share their technologies with Chinese state-owned or influenced enterprises as a condition of operating in the country.”

The ITIF report explains that in 2006, “China made the strategic decision to shift to a “China Inc.” development model focused on helping Chinese firms, often at the expense of foreign firms. Chinese leaders decided that attracting commodity-based production facilities from multinational corporations (MNCs) was no longer the goal…The path to prosperity and autonomy was now to be ‘indigenous innovation’…”

The document “advocating this shift was ‘The Guidelines for the Implementation of the National Medium- and Long-term Program for Science and Technology Development (2006-2020)’…to ‘create an environment for encouraging innovation independently, promote enterprises to become the main body of making technological innovation and strive to build an innovative-type country.’”

Some 402 technologies, from intelligent automobiles to integrated circuits to high performance computers were included so that China could seek the capability to master virtually all advanced technologies, with the focus on Chinese firms gaining those capabilities through indigenous innovation.

However, China is not alone in trying to force the transfer of technology and R&D from foreign multinationals ? Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Portugal, and Venezuela have the same goal.

Why do so many nations engine in innovation mercantilism? Atkinson testified that there are two principle reasons. “First, these nations have embraced a particular and fundamentally limited model of economic growth that holds that the best way to grow an economy is through exports and shifting production to higher-value (e.g., innovation-based) production. Moreover, they don’t want to wait the 20 to 50 years it will take to naturally move up the value chain through actions like improving education, research capabilities, and infrastructure, as nations like the United States did. They want to get there now and the only way to do this is to short-circuit the process through innovation mercantilism. This explains much of China’s economic policies. The Chinese know that to achieve the level of technological sophistication and innovation that America enjoys will take them at least half a century if they rely on only their own internal actions. So they are intent on stealing and pressuring as much of American (and other advanced nations’) technology as they can to their own companies. If you can’t build it, steal it, is their modus operendi.”

Atkinson added that the second reason why these nations do this is because they don’t believe in the rule of law and the principles of free trade like Western nations and much of Europe do. These nations also “work on the ‘guilt’ of Western, developed nations. The narrative goes like this: the West has used its imperialist powers to gain its wealth, including at the expense of poor, developing nations and now it wants to “pull the ladder” up after it. This means turning a blind eye to intellectual property and giving our technology, including pharmaceutical drugs, to nations almost for free. After all, we are rich and they are poor because we are rich.”

The reality is that forced technology transfer is enabling China and other nations to gain global market share. It is doing “considerable harm to U.S. technology companies and to the U.S. economy, if for no other reason than reducing their profits and ability to reinvest in the next wave of innovation.”

Atkinson posed the question, “So what should the U.S. government do? He responded that “this is a difficult question because if there were easy solutions, they would have been done by now.” He recommended the following actions:

  • Try to do more through conventional trade dispute channels and expand funding for the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office (USTR) so it can do more.
  • Ensure that future bilateral trade and investment treaties (BIT) contain strong and enforceable provisions against forced technology and R&D transfer.
  • Congress should make it clear that it will not judge any administration by whether a BIT with China is concluded, but rather by if the United States made a strong effort to conclude a treaty that provided full protection against mercantilist practices like forced transfer of R&D.
  • Congress should pass legislation that allows firms to ask the Department of Justice for an exemption to coordinate actions regarding technology transfer and investment to other nations.
  • Congress should exclude mercantilists from the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP).

Finally, he recommended that the United States actively explore alternatives to the WTO and  pursue a two-pronged trade strategy, continuing as best it can to improve conventional trade organizations like the WTO, but also creating alternative “play-by-the-rules” clubs of like-minded countries.

He concluded his testimony stating, “Pressured or mandatory technology transfer by other nations has, is, and will continue to negatively impact American R&D and innovation capabilities. It’s time for the federal government to step up its actions to fight this corrosive mercantilist practice.”

Curbing Chinese mercantilism must become a key priority of our trade policy if we want to address this serious threat to American manufacturers and the U. S. economy.

 

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Economy, Innovation, Manufacturing, National security, Outsourcing, Trade | 2 Comments »

How Some Manufacturers are Successful in Competing Globally

Tuesday, December 4th, 2012

While attending the FABTECH Expo in Las Vegas last month, I interviewed several companies that all or the majority of their manufacturing in the U. S. to find out what they are doing to successfully compete in the global marketplace.

The first company was Laserstar Technologies, located Riverside, RI, and I interviewed Peter Tkocz, Regional Sales Mgr., southwestern States. Laserstar makes laser welding and marking equipment using the “free-moving” concept they development, enabling users to eliminate costly fixturing devices, benefit from pin-point accuracy, increase the range of assembly and repair applications and minimize the potential hazards of heat damage. Peter told me that the company is 55 years old and started making jewelry. When jewelry making went overseas in the 1990s, he said that the company had to reinvent itself and get into new markets to survive. They set a goal to enhance the quality, performance, and innovation of their products, programs and services on a continuing basis and became a “lean” manufacturing company.

Since, then, they have developed a diverse customer base of six major markets:

  • Medical – cardiac pacemakers, defibrillators, guide wires, catheters, hearing aids, orthodontic appliances, prosthetics and surgical tools
  • Dental – crowns and bridges, partial and implant fabrication and repair.
  • Electronics – a wide variety of different materials, component parts or final assemblies
  • Aerospace
  • Micro technology – wide range complex applications for laser welding and marking
  • Tool and die repair – ideal for modifications and repairs on molds, tools and dies as the process is quick, precise and will not damage surrounding surfaces.
  • Jewelry – a fast fix to repair jewelry and eyeglasses, and their new Fiber star machine can weld down to 12 microns, which is critical for high-end gem stones

LaserStar’s Research & Development laboratory is focused on inventing new technologies that change markets and create business opportunities, utilizing input from customers. Laserstar sells through learning centers vs. distributors, and the three learning centers at their headquarters in Rhode Island, California, and Florida. Their laser education courses provide a solid foundation of fundamental laser welding and laser marking skill sets to immediately gain a revenue impact for the new or existing iWeld, LaserStar or FiberStar laser welding or laser engraving system.

I next interviewed Dan Moiré, Sr. V. P. Sales of TRYSTAR, located in Faribault, Minnesota. TRYSTAR is a leading domestic manufacturer and international distributor of portable and permanent power solutions, industrial cables and power accessories. The company began operations as Bridgewater Tech, an industrial cable wholesaler founded in 1991. It wasn’t long before they realized there was room for innovation and improvement in the safety and performance of the products they were selling. As a result, they began manufacturing their own welding and grounding cables under the TRYSTAR brand in 1993.

As the superiority of TRYSTAR cables became evident throughout the industry, they expanded operations to offer customers greater versatility and reliability in the field, and as the brand became well known, the company transitioned from Bridgewater Tech to TRYSTAR.

Dan Said that today, TRYSTAR offers a wide range of capabilities specifically designed with the end-user in mind. They provide efficient, customized solutions, made with only the highest quality raw materials, manufactured on site, and serviced by their own professionals. Their factory is as vertically integrated as possible, and they provide customers with a full range of professionally packaged industrial products and services. They even extrude their own cable and do sheet metal fabrication and welding in-house.

TRYSTAR was the first to…

  • introduce sequential foot-marking to the welding cable industry, reducing the chance of waste
  • introduce custom-printed, colored cable, reducing the chance of theft on the job site
  • market a color-coded, insulated inner safety liner, designed to alert the cable’s user to any damage or wear and minimize problems in the field
  • produce a true Arctic weather cable that remains flexible to -57°C
  • introduce an improved clear-sheathed grounding cable that is flexible from -40°C to +105°C, allowing for safer grounding of high power lines during outages
  • introduce environmentally responsible, recyclable packaging for cable products
  • provide direct-to-market, completely assembled cable products, with unique and specific job identifiers, delivered directly to the job site

Kevin Duhamel, Product Sales Mgr at Gorbel was my next interview. Gorbel has over 30 years experience providing overhead handling solutions to customers in a wide range of industries. They have a comprehensive line of Crane Technology products, including work station bridge cranes, patented track cranes, I-beam jib cranes, gantries, and work station jib cranes. They also have an exciting line of Ergonomic Lifting products, featuring our G-Force® Intelligent Lifting Device, our Easy Arm® Intelligent Lifting Arm, and our G-Jib®. Their newest line, Tether Track Fall Arrest Safety Systems, provides a turnkey fall protection solution that exceeds OSHA safety standards. –

They have been in business since 1977 and are the largest U. S. manufacturer of lifting devices and cranes. Kevin said that their G-Force unit can lift up to 1320 lbs with higher speed and precision than chain hoists. They have two manufacturing plants in the U. S. – Fishers, NY and Pell City, AL – and sell to Europe, Canada, Mexico, and South America from their U. S. plant. They have a plant in Tianjin, China to market to customers such as John Deere and Caterpillar that have plants in China. About 90% of their business comes from North America and Mexico. They are very vertically integrated and qualified to have their product stickers say “Made in USA.”

I met and spoke to several of the top executives at TigerStop, located in Vancouver, WA, including president and founder Spencer Dick. Spencer founded TigerStop in 1994 and focuses on developing new product lines and enhancing their current products to simplify production processes for their customers.

TigerStop® LLC, is the global leader in stop/gauge and pusher systems that includes precision measuring systems, saws, and material handling equipment. National Sales Mgr., Erland Russell, told me that their products can easily integrate with most machinery used in the woodworking, metal, fenestration and plastics industries. He said that one of their models can measure and precisely saw material up to 20 ft. in length. TigerStop maintains an aggressive research and development program with over 100 patents awarded or pending.

TigerStop’s manufacturing is very vertically integrated in their Vancouver plant, but they also have an additional manufacturing and distribution facility in Wierden, Netherlands. The TigerStop distribution network spans six continents and their products are supported in five languages. TigerStop provides world-class customer support through experienced service technicians, on-going dealer training, and online technical resources.

Next, I interviewed Mike Albrecht, National Sales Mgr., at the Scotchman Industries booth. Scotchman Industries, Inc. is a leading manufacturer of metal fabrication equipment, accessories, and custom tools, such as ironworkers, cold saws, band saws, tube and pipe notchers, and measuring systems for nearly half a century.

Art Kroetch founded Scotchman Industries in the early 1960s to make and sell farm-related products, such as pickup stock racks, corral panels, gates and chutes. In 1966, Scotchman Industries purchased the patent for a hydraulic ironworker, the first machine of its kind in the world, and began manufacturing ironworkers. This machine, using hydraulic pressure, created up to a 35-ton force that could punch, bend and shear metal.

In 1978, Scotchman Industries purchased Excel Manufacturing Ltd. of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and was able to provide a line of ironworkers that ranged from 30-ton to 90-ton capacities for the world market. Today, Scotchman Industries, Inc. has a complete line of thirteen different ironworkers, ranging in capacities from 45 to 150 tons, with component tool design, and a fully integrated European style; both are available in either single or dual operator models. Scotchman has successfully acquired and maintained a large portion of the ironworker market.

Scotchman Industries is proud to be an American manufacturer who has always been export-minded. The company was given the President’s “E” Certificate for Exports in 1981 by the Secretary of Commerce, for excellence in its increased exporting of products. Today Scotchman Industries continues to export their products to many countries around the world.

Scotchman is located in Philip, SD; Mike said that all of their products are manufactured in the USA. They have donated equipment to the Workshops for Warriors located here in San Diego, CA.

Finally, I interviewed Heather Gaynor, Marketing Communications Mgr., at Swagelok, located in Solon, OH. Swagelok is a privately-held company that manufactures designs, manufactures, and delivers an expanding range of the highest quality fluid system products and solutions, such as tube fittings, valves, regulators, hoses and other products that are vital to fluid system solutions in industries such as power generation, oil and gas production, chemical processing, biopharmaceutical, research, semi-conductor manufacturing and more. They manufacture everything in the U. S. and are very vertically integrated.

Swagelok products and services are delivered locally through a network of more than 200 authorized sales and service centers that support customers in 57 countries on six continents.

While the products and services of the companies I interviewed are quite different, there are common threads:

  • All of the products are sold to other businesses (referred to as B-B) instead of to consumers.
  • The products fill specific needs and requirements of other manufacturers.
  • All of the companies manufacture their products in America.
  • The companies export their products to other companies

In addition, three of the six companies are privately held so that that management isn’t under the pressure to maximize quarterly profits and can focus on long-term company goals.

What this shows is that American manufacturers with unique products that satisfy customers’ needs can compete successfully in business-to-business global markets where the predatory mercantilist countries of China, Korea and India haven’t targeted to take over the market and destroy their American competition. If American manufacturers truly had a level playing field provided by “smart” trade agreements instead of the current lopsided, dumb agreements we have in place now, they would be able to compete successfully in the global marketplace. It is time to address the predatory mercantilist practices of these countries. Designating China as a currency manipulator would be a good start!

 

Tags:, ,
Posted in Innovation, Manufacturing, Trade | 1 Comment »

The Future of American Manufacturing — Is there Reason for Hope?

Tuesday, August 14th, 2012

While the state of American manufacturing has been grim for the past decade, the “reshoring” trend and new technologies are making the outlook for the future of American manufacturing look brighter than it now appears.

In the past few years, the key factors for returning manufacturing to America have been quality problems, rising labor costs, intellectual property theft, rising shipping costs, long lead times for product delivery from Asia, and the cost of inventory for the larger lots you have to buy from Asia to get the cheaper prices.

Now, Harry Moser’s Total Cost of Ownership worksheet calculator is helping companies quantify the hidden costs of doing business offshore enabling more companies to make the decision to reshore manufacturing. According to Harry Moser, founder of the “Reshoring Initiative,” about 10% of companies nationwide are bringing manufacturing back to America from Asia. It is a pleasure to read frequent stories about even large companies such as Dow Chemicals, Caterpillar, GE, and Ford starting to move some manufacturing back to the U.S. from China.

“But rising costs and political pressure aren’t what’s going to rapidly change the equation.” according to Vivek Wadhwa, Vice President of Academics and Innovation at Singularity University. “The disruption will come from a set of technologies that are advancing at exponential rates and converging. These technologies include robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), 3D printing, and nanotechnology. These have been moving slowly so far, but are now beginning to advance exponentially just as computing does.”

In the past, large American food product companies like General Mills and Kraft Foods, as well as the automotive industry, have been the biggest user of complex robotic systems. But, today’s robots are smaller and cheaper ? they are really specialized electromechanical devices run by software and remote control designed to perform specific tasks in the manufacturing of products for a variety of industries. These robots are cost effective for lower production volume than those used in the food and automotive industry enabling more companies to utilize this technology.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is really the software that makes computers, robots, and even unmanned aircraft and space vehicles run in an “intelligent” manner. Unmanned vehicles have dominated the sky in the “war on terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan and are now being used to provide surveillance along our international border with Mexico. The unmanned rover, “Curiosity,” traversing the surface of Mars is an example of the latest AI technology.

“Additive manufacturing is the process of producing parts by successive melting of layers of material rather than removing material, as is the case with conventional machining.

Each layer is melted to the exact geometry defined by a 3D CAD model. Additive Manufacturing allows for building parts with very complex geometries without any sort of tools or fixtures, and without producing any waste material.”

This process, also known as 3D printing, is turning product designs into reality for a fraction of the cost of past manufacturing technologies. The application of this technology started as a way to make prototypes faster and cheaper. What is great about parts made by this process is that they are not just the fragile prototype parts previously made by stereo lithography technology; parts made by 3D printing can function as production parts.

A simple tabletop 3D printing device, such MakerBot’s Replicator, is now down to about $1,700 for use in home workshops, making the technology more accessible to students, researchers, do-it-yourself enthusiasts, hobbyists, inventors and entrepreneurs.

Millions of dollars of government-funded research in additive manufacturing has led to breakthroughs and cost reduction in the utilization of this technology. Large, complex geometry parts that had to be made by casting and forging with expensive tooling are now being made by laser sintering of metals such as tool steel, stainless steel, cobalt chrome-moly, and other steel alloys. While Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) and Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) began as a way to build parts early in the design cycle, it is now being used to manufacture end-use parts. Depending on the material, up to 100% density can be achieved with material properties comparable to those found with traditional manufacturing methods.

There are many applications for the laser sintering method of additive manufacturing in the aerospace and defense industry because of the low volume requirements. The cost of amortizing expensive casting and forging tooling into low volume production was the main reason for the $600 hammers and $900 toilet seats of the defense spending scandals 20 years ago.

Even the tooling to make simple injection molded plastic parts can now be made by this technology, helping keep some plastic injection molding work in the U. S. that used to go to China.

We are just beginning to see advances in nanotechnology that will affect manufacturing in the next decade. Nanotechnology (sometimes shortened to “nanotech”) is the manipulation of matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology works with materials, devices, and other structures with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers.

Since the creation of the National Nanotechnology Initiative in 2000, the U. S. has invested 3.7 billion dollars. “The NNI involves the nanotechnology-related activities of 25 Federal agencies, 15 of which have specific budgets for nanotechnology R&D. The agencies involved allocate expenditures from their core budgets, demonstrating nanotechnology’s importance to their mission.”

Today, engineers and scientists are developing new types of materials, such as carbon nanotubes, ceramic-matrix nanocomposites, and new carbon fibers. These new materials are stronger, lighter, more energy-efficient, and more durable than current materials in use.

These advances in technology will be a real boon to the U. S. manufacturing industry in the next 5 – 10 years, but they will have a dramatic impact on China as well. Large Chinese manufacturing companies such as Foxconn are starting to utilize robotics, which will cause a reduction in the Chinese labor force just as it did in the U. S. a generation ago.

It is unlikely that the 10% of products being returned to the United States from China is affecting China’s unemployment rate, but the serious financial problems of several countries in the European Union is taking its toll on China’s exports to these countries. While China reported a low unemployment rate of 4.1% in July 2012, this needs to be understood in the context of the size of China’s workforce. The Chinese workforce is so large that there are actually more people unemployed in any one month in China than the total workforce of the United States.

In February 2011, Marketplace Business China correspondent, Rob Schmitz, explained the unemployment situation in China, stating, “Now that’s what’s called the ‘urban registered unemployment rate.’ I emphasize ‘registered,’ because it only counts people who officially live in urban areas. Many people are off the books. These are the hundreds of millions of migrant workers who move to the cities and they make up a huge labor pool. So when you factor in that population, China’s actual unemployment rate comes out to be 22 percent. That’s around 200 million people who don’t have work.”

If China wants to avoid headlines of massive unemployment as the U. S. has experienced, the Chinese government needs to change its focus from an export-driven economy to a domestic-driven economy. This will require a far greater increase in wages than has occurred in the past few years so that the average Chinese worker will be able to buy the products they are now producing for export.

It may be worth thinking about emulating the strategy that Henry Ford utilized in 1914 when he wanted to stabilize his workforce ? he decided to pay double the average daily wage. This had a twofold result:  he kept his employees from quitting his company to take a job at another company for a slightly higher wage, and the higher wages his company paid enabled his workers to be able to buy the Model T car they were making.

If China’s industry switched to manufacturing more products for their domestic marketplace, it would also help reduce the unemployment for their college graduates. As Rob Schmitz explained in the same article, “Nearly a quarter of last year’s graduates haven’t found jobs. Part of the problem is that there is a big disconnect between how China’s colleges are preparing its young people and the reality of China’s economy. China’s economy is still mostly dependent on manufacturing and building things. At the same time, you have six million college students a year graduating with degrees from everything from the sciences to liberal arts. And China’s economy simply hasn’t evolved to the point where enough employers are looking for workers with those skills.”

It is becoming apparent that more and more Americans now realize that manufacturing jobs are the foundation of the prosperity of our country and that we need to be producing a major portion of goods domestically in order to have a strong manufacturing industry and thus a strong economy. It may be China’s turn to learn this lesson.

Posted in Innovation, Manufacturing, Reshoring | 1 Comment »

American Inventiveness is Alive and Well in San Diego

Tuesday, July 10th, 2012

About 150 inventors, “wannabes”, entrepreneurs, and service providers gathered for the annual San Diego Inventors Forum contest on June 21, 2012, held at the corporate headquarters of Jack in the Box.  The venue was a first for the Inventors Forum, which customarily meets the second Thursday of each month at the law offices of Sheppard Mullin.  Ten contestants were selected out of 15 applicants to present their latest inventions for the audience to pick the top three inventions.  The entrance criteria was made stiffer this year so that an invention had to be either already patented or “patent pending” and have either a working model or be ready for sale to the marketplace.

Tana and Myla Zapf won the first place prize of $1,000 for their “Curly Petz,” a small plush toy that can be worn as a slap-on bracelet. The toys are an extension of their “Slapitz” slap-on bracelet, which won second prize at the contest two years ago. Tana, 13, and Myla, 11, are daughters of inventor Eric Zapf and San Diego City Councilwoman Lorie Zapf, who were both in attendance.  For more information on Curly Petz, email Eric Zapf at ericdzapf2@gmail.com.

Eric Zapf was also among the ten competitors for his invention of Apex Iris Disposal System ? a trash container with a self-opening and closing lid with a circular aperture like an eye’s iris.

Second place went to Raad Khaleel for his Self-Irrigating Container, which collects rainwater and then distributes the collected water to plants for use in drought-prone regions, especially in the Middle East and Africa.  Those interested in the Self-Irrigating Container should send email to ertaqaco@hotmail.com.

Third place went to Gene McGuinness for his Magic Blade, an all-in-one stainless steel kitchen knife and grater that chops, slices, dices, grates, shaves, and strains.  For more information on the Magic Blade, email McGuinness at president1956@gmail.com

Other inventions presented were:

RollOnRack, invented by Chris Lindsay and Chris Baker ? a new, universal mount, roof-rack system that uses rollers and an automatically expanding load bed to provide simple, safe and secure transportation of oversized cargo (like plywood) that no existing roof-rack can.  The 4X6 cargo rack expands to 4×10, and the rollers on the tailgate simplify and aid in loading large items into the rack.  The roller on the front allows one person to mount the rack on the vehicle.  It is made from lightweight and strong extruded aluminum, and the Universal mounting system attaches to almost any vehicle with factory luggage rails.  Chris Lindsey may be reached at chris@rollonrack.com

“Capture and Route“ ?  a Patent Pending device that sends POS Receipts to cell phones and web receipt accounts.  The “Capture and Route” comes in two models with either model simply “added to” the existing system with no changes to the existing POS computer or the existing POS printer.  The first model is a stand-alone device that connects between the output of an existing computer and the input to an existing printer. The second model is a printer interface board that is inserted into the existing printer, replacing the previous printer interface board.

The “Capture and Route” is controlled by a Cell phone or Handheld Device and captures the computer output that would normally be printed on paper and prints this data into the handheld device or cell phone. Once the printer data is in the handheld it can be digitally searched, sorted, categorized, totaled or sent automatically to your home, office, accountant, your website or multiple destinations.   For further information contact Bruce L Hall at Info@TicketingSystems.com

Tinnitus Solution ? a diagnostic test for objectively measuring tinnitus (ringing in the ears) in humans and animals, developed by Michael Kinder, President/CEO of Kinder Scientific Company, LLC.

One Little Drop for Tannin Reduction ? an additive that changes the taste of the wine by removing some of the tannins and therefore reduces the astringency of the wine, reduces the bitterness, and improves the body.  Wine Improvement Inc. has been working with additives to accelerate this process.  Our process is well known in the wine industry and is commonly used to improve the balance of the wine.  This material is added from a dropper bottle as one or two drops stirred into a glass of wine. Although this by-the-glass is a new concept, it uses the same materials that wine makers use. The goal is to get a balanced wine so that the acids and tannins do not dominate the taste; this is called a supple wine.  Also, the drop has additives to reduce bitterness.  Other additives are used to build up the body after removing some of the tannins.  Thus, the Tannin Reduction Product is a complex mixture of materials to make wine more balanced or supple.  Scot Clark, a retired entrepreneur in the semiconductor industry and amateur wine maker, and his daughter, Libby Simon, are the co-founders of Wine Improvement Inc.

JackHawk 9000 ? Titanium bottle-opening sunglasses, invented by a group led by SDSU slums Matt Decelles and Zach Luczynski and Patrick Eckstein, an alum of Cal State San Marcos. The dual-use sunglasses came to be through an informal network called “The Commons Designs Group,” defined as consisting of “a few friends who recently graduated from colleges around California”.  CDG has members from Southern and Northern California.  Although the sunglasses didn’t win the contest, they are already a winner, raising more than their original goal of $16,000 on Kickstarter to enter into production.

Are you ready to turn that idea into a product?  Then, let us help you get it started.  Come and get motivated, hear successful local San Diego inventors speak at the San Diego Inventors Forum and learn how they developed their marketable products.  Come network in a room filled with fellow creative people and get guidance and encouragement to take your first or next steps necessary to turn your ideas into a reality.  At our meetings, you meet our Mentor inventors and professionals in many fields.  You can introduce yourself, ask financing, business, licensing, marketing, legal and engineering questions and present your ideas to private individuals or for focus group review. You get to ask for what you are seeking, and we try to match your needs.

We members of the SDIF steering committee invite all innovators, inventors, engineers, artists and start-up entrepreneurs to attend our monthly meetings, held the second Thursday of the month from 6:30pm to 7pm for networking and 7pm to 8:30pm for the meeting.

 

Now that the annual contest is over, the 2012-2013 topics schedule begins again.  July’s topic will be “Innovation and Entrepreneurship” – harnessing your creative mind, and August will continue with “IP 101” – when, why and how to search for patents, trademarks and copyrights.   During the course of the year, topics to be covered include marketing, licensing, branding, networking, and funding.  I will be giving my annual presentation in November on “Manufacturing 101” – how to select the right manufacturing processes and sources to make your product.  For further information, the San Diego Inventors Forum can be reached at http://www.sdinventors.org or by calling forum president Adrian Pelkus at 760-591-9608.

 

The entrepreneurial spirit that made this country great is still going strong amongst us.  You have an opportunity to make a difference and help make American great again by making products in America.  We welcome you to join us at our next meeting!

 

Posted in Economy, Innovation | No Comments »

Newer Entries »