July 2007 Edition

Editor's Corner

Root Cause Analysis

Where have all of the U.S. manufacturing jobs gone? Check the makers of all of the stuff in the big box stores. We’re shooting ourselves in the foot.

Back in my days as an information technology technical writer, I witnessed a lot of system failures. Working in a super-regional bank – no, it didn’t have a big red S on it’s chest, but thank you for asking – downtime of major systems cost thousands of dollars per minute. When an application crashed, emergency-response code monkeys would fly in and apply a fix. It was up to the maintenance experts to find the root cause of the program’s problem, then repair it so it wouldn’t happen again. Finding the ultimate cause of problems is called root cause analysis and it’s used in everything from software to war analysis.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers – IAM – recently vented the union’s frustration at manufacturing job losses at a forum entitled “Open Discussion on American Manufacturing,” hosted by the Senate Democratic Steering Committee.

Usually, such forums are events where a lot of balloon juice is expelled with not much change, but the president of the union, Tom Buffenbarger, offered some staggering numbers about job losses: more than 43,000 manufacturing plants closed with the loss of 3.2 million jobs since 1999.

“No economy can continue to absorb that kind of damage and hope to survive,” he said.

Good point, but then he urged that lawmakers, “ . . . lay the foundation for a national industrial policy that will put the brakes on this epidemic of job losses.”

Ah, more policies will fix things. Right, they’ve worked so well in the past. We’re so law- and policy-bound now that given a close enough examination, everyone and every company is in violation somewhere. Policies won’t fix the cause of the problem anymore than putting a bucket under a roof leak repairs the shingles. Here’s where we have to employ root cause analysis. What caused those jobs to disappear?

Some of those jobs went away because of better manufacturing efficiencies. Robots replaced minimally-skilled workers. New products and processes made some jobs obsolete. Not much call anymore for the output of the phonograph plant. There’s no fixing the loss of jobs due to better efficiencies short of featherbedding. In fact, it doesn’t need fixing at all. We don’t need government-mandated retention of black-and-white TV assembly lines.

Other jobs disappeared when some manufacturing went offshore. Bean counters force work offshore to boost corporate profits. As long as meeting quarterly earnings projections are more important than U.S. self-interest, that will continue.

The major root cause of job loss, in my opinion – and since this is an editorial, which is by definition my opinion – is that U.S. consumers have turned their back on goods manufactured in the U.S.

“But, That’s Where All of the Good Stuff Comes From!”

We’d rather buy Japanese cars, Korean washers, Finnish cell phones, and Chinese electronics. I’d be willing to bet that an embarrassing number of the members of the IAM union, all 700,000 active and retired members, drive cars made by foreign-owned companies.

How can we expect to keep manufacturing jobs in the U.S. when most of the people in this country won’t buy things made here? The last bastion of U.S. automotive makers, the heavy-duty pickup truck, is being eroded by offshore manufacturers.

There comes a tipping point where U.S. manufacturers throw their hands in the air and give up. Daimler saw it happening with Chrysler and shed itself of the automaker. Ford and GM are bleeding red ink and may go the way of AMC. When manufacturing goes away, it doesn’t come back. Try to find an American TV.

In a time when “truth, justice, and the American way” is replaced in the last Superman movie with “truth, justice, and all that stuff,” it’s unfashionable to have pride in our national accomplishments, but I’ll say it anyway: “Buy American.”