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A GM Factory With 2,100 Workers Closes, And 33,000 Other People Lose Their Jobs -- Impacting 120,000

By Richard McCormack
richard@manufacturingnews.com

The economic impact caused by a single, large manufacturing plant closing in America is massive, according to research conducted by the Institute for Research on Labor, Employment and the Economy (IRLEE) at the University of Michigan.

In a case study on the closure of the General Motors Moraine Assembly Plant in Montgomery County, Ohio, IRLEE director Marian Krzyzowski and associate director Lawrence Molnar found that for every hourly job lost 15 jobs in the economy disappeared with it.

GM closed its 4.1 million-square-foot Moraine Assembly operation in late 2008, laying off 2,170 hourly workers. The event led to the loss of another 10,850 indirect jobs (for a total of 13,020 jobs lost) in the immediate vicinity of the plant.

But job losses cascaded through GM's supply chain, with the elimination of another 3,334 jobs: DMAX laid off 645 workers; Jamestown Industries laid off 80 workers; Johnson Controls laid off 130 workers; PMG Ohio laid off 70 workers; Plastech laid off 88 workers; four Delphi plants that supplied Moraine laid off 2,120 workers; Tenneco laid off 118 workers; and EFTEC laid off 83 workers.

As a result, the total number of indirect jobs lost due to the Moraine plant shutdown was 27,520.

In all 33,024 workers were impacted by closing one large factory.

READ MORE >>> manufacturingnews.com

Create Date : 20 ธันวาคม 2554
Last Update : 20 ธันวาคม 2554 19:13:36 น.
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Evergreen Solar Heads To China 'As Quickly As We Can'

By Richard A. McCormack

richard@manufacturingnews.com

Evergreen Solar Heads To China 'As Quickly As We Can'

If you can't beat China and can't get the U.S. government to understand what you're up against, then you may as well join them.

That is what Evergreen Solar has decided to do, shifting production of solar fabrication and assembly from its factory in Devens, Mass., to Wuhan, China.

Evergreen Solar CEO Rick Feldt went to Washington, D.C., and met with Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. He told them Chinese government policies made U.S. production uncompetitive. But the Obama appointees do "not quite [have] the understanding that we think is necessary about what's actually happening in this industry," Feldt told financial analysts on Feb. 9. "The United States keeps talking about keeping jobs. You go to the President's State of the Union Address and he said, 'I want to keep jobs in the United States.' It's easy if you say it, but you've got to do something to do that."

Without an adequate response from the U.S. government to counter competitive forces working against domestic production, "we are going to China as quickly as we can," Feldt told the analysts. "The issue for us is just how long does it take to get there. We've got the China operations underway as we speak." The company expects to spend $50 million this year on its Wuhan, China, facility.

Evergreen Solar's Massachusetts plant is producing panels at $2.05 per watt, down from $2.24 per watt in the third quarter of 2009. But the 100-megawatt Chinese facility will produce panels for $1.25 per watt, going down to $1.00 per watt by the end of 2012 including wafer costs of about $0.30 per watt, Feldt told analysts. The company is also in the process of hiring engineers in China to conduct R&D, "which will help us reduce costs," added Evergreen Solar CFO Michael El-Hillow.

Virtually all of the company's new hires are taking place in China. "Basically we have a headcount freeze in the United States, maybe doing onesies and twosies, but we're cutting way back," said El-Hillow. "It all comes down to scale. We have got to scale that at the top line of the capacity and that's what we're driving to, that's the drive to China. We're in a growth phase and we have to treat it as such.

"The fact is, if the Chinese are going to continue to sell near marginal cost because they get the support of the Chinese government, that's just the way the world is. Either you get German ministers talking about it, you get the United States talking about it, but all we can hope for is this: that the U.S. government will not let the Chinese replace the Middle East for access to solar energy," said El-Hillow.

In response to the Chinese competitive challenge, Evergreen Solar has two options. It can try to counter China's advantage by reducing its costs in Massachusetts as low as possible, or "get to China as fast as we can," said El-Hillow. "We've tossed internally about becoming more aggressive in Washington, trying to get them to understand the situation that we face as a solar manufacturer and leveraging our wafer technology. There's no silver bullet here. It's an incredibly tough situation." Added CEO Feldt: "The issue for us is just how long does it take to get [to China]."

The company's Wuhan, China, wafer fab building is almost complete and the company will soon be installing furnaces. "We have a strong management team in place and we are hiring experienced engineers and other essential support staff needed for the initial 100-megawatt facility," said Feldt. "We are well positioned to prove again that our wafer manufacturing technology will scale quickly and successfully, this time in the low-cost manufacturing region of Wuhan."

The company expects to produce 20 to 25 megawatts of solar cells per quarter in China by early 2011. During that time, the company expects to reduce costs at its Devens facility to about $1.50 per watt "as we transition panel assembly to China," said Feldt. The Devens facility is one of the most advanced solar facilities in the United States, Feldt told the analysts, and the company expects it to remain its center of excellence for wafer and cell technology, process development and advanced R&D.

For now, the company will keep cell manufacturing in Devens. "We think we're extremely competitive making wafers any place in the world," said Feldt. "We have this fixed investment in cell manufacturing so it comes down a little bit to cash versus GAAP accounting depreciation [and] amortization." Even if the company continues to improve its Devens, Mass., plant "it's not all clear to us that we'd be better off by buying a whole new set of equipment in a salvaging operation in China and scrapping the equipment we have here. These cell lines are not easy just to pick up and move -- of course it's possible -- so we'll have to play that one by ear. We think that we will continue to reduce wafer and cell costs efficiently that would make sense given our fixed investment here. Of course if it doesn't we would take other action."

In 2007, the company received $23 million in grants from the State of Massachusetts to build its facility on state-owned property in Devens. It also received $17.5 million in low-interest loans along with a 30-year lease on the property.

Evergreen spent $8.5 million in its fourth quarter on the transition of panel assembly operations from Devens, Mass., to China. It expects to reduce costs by $4 million to $5 million per quarter in 2010 "consisting mainly of non-cash accelerated appreciation charges associated with transitioning panel assembly to China," said El-Hillow.

The company expects its production capacity to be about 175 megawatts in 2010, up from 104 megawatts in 2009, an increase of 70 percent. The company shipped 32 megawatts of solar systems in its fourth quarter. Product sales for the fourth quarter of 2009 were $74.5 million, compared to $75.5 million for the third quarter 2009. Sales declined slightly due to a 3.7 percent decline in average selling price, which was $2.32 per watt in the fourth quarter of 2009, down from $2.41 per watt in the third quarter. Prices are expected to drop by another 15 percent in 2010. The company sold 68 percent of its output in Europe, and only between 15 percent and 20 percent in the United States.

Create Date : 20 ธันวาคม 2554
Last Update : 20 ธันวาคม 2554 19:11:02 น.
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Aerospace Executives Say Budget Cuts Imperil Health Of U.S. Defense Industrial Base

Aerospace Executives Say Budget Cuts Imperil Health Of U.S. Defense Industrial Base

By Richard A. McCormack
editor@manufacturingnews.com

The U.S. defense industrial base is on the verge of being irretrievably harmed if the Department of Defense budget is cut by any more than already planned, according to top executives of U.S. defense and aerospace companies. The industry is on the cusp of losing the ability to design and produce future weapons and space systems, due to $480 billion in cuts that have already been approved. "This is simply more than we can sustain," says Marion Blakey, President and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA). "Our position is no more cuts. No more. We believe that defense has been cut into the bone with the Budget Control Act" signed by President Obama on August 2, 2011. "We cannot have that continue."

If the congressional super committee can't agree on a deficit reduction plan by Nov. 23, the Pentagon's budget will be automatically reduced by another $600 billion over 10 years. Such a cut would result in the loss of one million jobs in the defense sector, increase the unemployment rate by one percentage point and reduce GDP growth by 25 percent, according to AIA.

"You cannot assume the defense industrial base will be there if there is no investment in R&D and no significant investment going forward in acquisitions and new programs," says Blakey.

If the Pentagon's budget is severely cut, there will be no peace dividend, say aerospace industry executives. "Not to be too black and white about it, but is a healthy industrial base critical to the security of the U.S. and the economic viability of the country?" asks Boeing CEO James Albaugh. "That is a question that the super committee has to answer."

Defense contractors are currently laying off employees and have stopped investing in R&D and new production equipment, according to industry executives. "If we had additional cuts of $600 billion over the next 10 years, I would question whether or not we have a fighting force that was capable or an industrial base left," says Albaugh. "We will wake up one morning having not addressed the indusial base issue and call for a capability and find that the contractors do not have the ability to provide the capability."

Boeing knows all about this problem. The company experienced serious problems gearing up production of its new Dreamliner 787. "One of the reasons we had issues with that airplane was the fact that we hadn't designed an airplane since the 777, and we lost the ability to do design," says Albaugh. Boeing had not been engaged in a new aircraft development program since the early 1990s. "We forgot how," says Albaugh.

Without new program starts, the Department of Defense and its contractors will be engaged in sustaining equipment already in the field. This was Boeing's role between the 777 and the 787. "Doing sustaining engineering is very different from development engineering, where you have to take the requirements, decompose those down to the smallest element of work and the smallest piece part and then you validate and verify that and build it up to the finished product," says Albaugh. "We were too busy doing sustaining engineering. For me to be a viable [defense] contractor, you have to do R&D and detailed design. You have to transition detailed design into production. You need to do production, and you need to support the products in the field. If you lose any point on that continuum, you will have a very difficult time reconstituting it. Right now, there are very few new starts and active design teams supporting our United States Department of Defense." A number of companies are building military aircraft, "but that doesn't mean they have the capability to develop a new airplane if they are called upon to do it," says Albaugh.

The defense industry is in a more difficult situation today than when the Cold War ended in 1989. When DOD's budget began to drop in the 1990s, a lot of military equipment was new: F-16, F-15, the B-1 bomber and Abrams tank. More than 700,000 military personnel retired from service. Today, the United States is fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with dealing with cyber warfare and terrorism. The country is not taking people out of uniform. Equipment is old and needs to be reset.

"It's a very different time," says Albaugh. Without cuts in personnel, health care and benefits, it means that most cuts to the military will be made in R&D and procurement. "In my mind, it's ironic right now that there is not enough talk about the industrial base," says Albaugh. "There has to be more. It really is the arsenal of freedom, and the first question we have to ask is: Is it strategic to the economic viability of our country? The answer is yes. I know the answer to that in the Pentagon is yes. I'm not sure what it is on Capitol Hill."

The industry is also different from the one described by President Eisenhower in the late 1950s, adds Blakey of AIA. "It is very fragile," she says. The industry has already consolidated from 130 major companies to only seven, notes David Hess, President of Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies Corp. "Rather than having four or five or six suppliers that might have a technical capability, there might be one that has that capability. If they elect to pursue other markets because defense isn't viable, we will lose that capability altogether. We have shrunk to the point where there is little margin in these key technologies."

Hess says: "It's the first time in history that we haven't had a new start on any kind on a helicopter or a fixed-wing program. As that capability atrophies, it is very hard to reconstitute and get it back. This is not a discussion about the commercial viability of the companies involved here. It's really a discussion about being able to maintain the industrial base that is absolutely critical to our national security."

The issue of de-industrialization is even more pronounced in the space sector. For the first time since the space era began, the United States does not have ability to put men into orbit. The country now relies on the Russians for all manned launches, at a cost of $60 million per launch. A new launch program is still not underway. When the Apollo program was ending, the Space Shuttle program had already been funded. "There may have been a gap in launches but there was no gap in the work on the manned space flight program," says Hess. "All the intellectual capital that was working on Apollo naturally moved to the Shuttle program. But today, we have a gap in manned U.S. launches now that the Shuttle program has ended. That is why we have seen hundreds of layoffs at Pratt Whitney Rocketdyne as well as other companies across the industry and across the country."

NASA has announced a new space launch system, but funding is not assured. "This tremendous intellectual capital that took decades to develop and took us to the moon and back, once it is dissolved it will be extremely hard to reconstitute if and when we decide to return to space," says Hess.

Funding for the Next Generation Air Transportation system is also in jeopardy. The country is still dependent on radar and radio technology deployed in the 1960s. Completing NextGen by 2025 would generate $320 billion in benefits to the U.S. economy, according to an AIA study conducted by Deloitte Touch. It would increase the number of flights by 20 percent and cut fuel burn and CO2 emissions by 12 percent. Yet, it is another aerospace program that is threatened.

AIA President Blakey says the debate over the national debt needs to take these issues into consideration. The U.S. aerospace industry is now competing with well-financed programs in Russia, China, Brazil, Canada, Europe and Japan. All are pushing to topple U.S. dominance in the sector. "It is our duty now to speak out," says Blakey.

AIA has started a "Second to None" campaign (www.secondtonone.org) aimed at educating "anyone who will listen" on the importance of keeping the military, space and aviation budgets at viable levels. This campaign "represents one of the most important actions in the history of the Aerospace Industries Association -- a 92-year-old trade association," she says. "The national debt threatens to overwhelm all other priorities. Our message for the administration and Congress is: Slow down. Take a very long look at the national security risks as they have been noted by everyone from Secretary of Defense Panetta, who said they are devastating, to General Patreaus, who has reason to know, and that is on top of many other national security experts. We ask the Congress and our leadership in the White House to consider whether eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next decade is at all consistent with the national imperative to create jobs. It just doesn't make any sense. As an industry that is responsible to both supplying the warfighter and contributing significantly to the health of our economy, we believe it is our duty now to speak out."

Create Date : 20 ธันวาคม 2554
Last Update : 20 ธันวาคม 2554 19:06:54 น.
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Cloud Computing: IBM's Top 12 Tech Trends for 2012 Include Cloud, Analytics, Mobile

What if you could predict the next big trend in IT to stay a step ahead of your competitors or ensure that you were building the right skills for future success?

The IBM 2011 Tech Trends Report is designed to provide a glimpse into what IT tools will become critical for businesses to adopt and the skills IT professionals need to stay ahead of the curve, drive success and help build a smarter planet.

As a result, IBM is focusing on four key areas: business analytics, mobile, cloud and social business. According to IBM, the demand for cloud computing is on the rise as organizations look to expand the impact of IT to deliver innovative services while realizing significant economies of scale. According to market research firm IDC, $17 billion were spent on cloud-related technologies, hardware and software in 2009.

IDC analysts expect that will grow to $45 billion by 2013. IBM officials said their analytics technologies help track key customer advancement milestones, allowing them to better target investments in marketing programs, content and products to improve results. They also help customers gain faster insight from statistics, charts and dashboards to determine the effectiveness of their marketing programs, call center performance and cross-selling initiatives.

The vendor's social business initiatives allow enterprises to measure the impact of social activity on their Website, including social referrals and the use of social features such as product reviews, enabling them to make better investment decisions in social programs. IBM also is exploring ways to buy, sell and secure greater customer loyalty at a time when mobile computing and social networks are growing. For the 2011 Tech Trends Report, IBM surveyed more than 4,000 IT professionals from 93 countries and 25 industries about the future of IT.

Create Date : 20 ธันวาคม 2554
Last Update : 20 ธันวาคม 2554 19:02:37 น.
Counter : 201 Pageviews.

Best Price Apple MacBook Air MC968LL/A

Best Price Apple MacBook Air MC968LL/A 11.6-Inch Laptop Description

The new MacBook Air is up to 2.5x faster than before. It features the latest Intel Core i5 dual-core processor, high-speed Thunderbolt I/O, a backlit keyboard, and OS X Lion, the next major release of the world’s most advanced desktop operating system. MacBook Air also comes standard with flash storage, so it boots up in seconds, launches apps quickly, and wakes from sleep in an instant. And a long-lasting battery powers MacBook Air for up to 5 hours and offers up to 30 days of standby time. All in a durable unibody design that’s thin, light, and ready for anything.

The MacBook Air with 11.6-inch screen–light, thin, and strong enough to take with you wherever you go (view larger).

This version of the MacBook Air (model MC968LL/A) sports a 11.6-inch high-resolution display, 1.6 GHz Intel Core i5 dual-core processor, 64 GB of flash memory storage, 2 GB of RAM, and an Intel HD Graphics 3000 integrated graphics processor (see full specifications below). It also comes with the iLife software suite, which includes the latest versions of iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand.

Create Date : 17 ธันวาคม 2554
Last Update : 17 ธันวาคม 2554 13:15:05 น.
Counter : 225 Pageviews.

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