Back to the future

Ask a smart young college student about her career plans and she might talk about business, medicine or law. On rare occasions, you might find someone interested in engineering. What you wont find is a student interested in manufacturing. Thats too bad, because after two decades of tough times, during which the sector has shed millions of workers, the future of manufacturing is looking bright again.

For one thing, the cost differential between the United States and the rest of the world is shrinking, thanks to rising productivity in American factories, a weaker dollar, higher wages in China and climbing transportation costs. Thats the conclusion of a study by the Boston Consulting Group, which says that by 2015 American companies will find it makes more economic sense to expand production in the U.S. rather than to build offshore.

There is another good reason for optimism: The same software savvy that has aided Ford (with the help of Microsoft and other local companies) provide better electronic systems for its cars and enabled Amazon to transform retailing and publishing is about to shake the rust off the manufacturing sector.

Computer-controlled machine tools and robots have been around for decades. Japanese companies like Fanuc have dominated that market. But those machines, developed for use on mass-production lines, are not easy to reprogram or network. In the emerging age of advanced manufacturing, when many different kinds of products will be built in small quantities on the same manufacturing line so that production can be easily adjusted to meet demand, you need smarter, more flexible machines.

Thats where Jim Kajiya comes in. A distinguished engineer at Microsoft Research, Kajiya has invested close to $10 million to open the Tolt Machine Works in Carnation, an impressive facility that he opened to visitors this week. Initially, Kajiyas goal is to use his machine shop to build high-precision parts for such products as medical equipment, airplanes and wind turbines.

But Kajiyas long-term goal is far more ambitious. He has acquired a broad array of large machine tools and is writing his own software code for them. He will test those systems in his machine shop with the goal of developing a new generation of networked machine tools. We are focusing on where manufacturing is going in the 21st century, says Kajiya. There will be a lot of disruptive technologies.

With just 10 employees, Kajiyas operation is still modest. But hes helping to build a future where youll send a computer file and get the [machined] part back in a couple of days. With a strong industrial base and good customers like Boeing, Kajiya is optimistic about Washington states chances of building a vibrant machine tool industry.

Manufacturing could well be the latest addition to our vibrant high-tech sector. Now theres a career with a future.