Is open source the way back for U.S. manufacturing?
Summary: What we're moving toward is a world where everyone works together on everything, with the leaders being those who implement best. That's a world where U.S. manufacturers can compete.
The assumption that the U.S. leads because of Intellectual Property, and thus that the developing world mainly benefits from open source, may need some re-evaluating.
There are a growing number of areas where the U.S. is falling behind. Manufacturing, for one. And this week I took two interviews about how open source may help us come back.
OpenMFG has launched a Drupal site to accelerate work on its ERP Suite and report writer. "We’re trying to open up the issue tracking system, which a lot of people don’t do," said CEO Ned Lilly.
This is an important point because there are as many levels of open as there are folks to interpret the word. There's open as in free, open as in licensing, and open as in transparent. Each is a little more open than the other. Transparent development is about as open as it gets.
Then Kurt Sand, senior manager at Telelogic Solutions, reported in to tell me about that company's commitment to the Eclipse Process Framework.
Here the word commitment is meant literally -- the company has "commiters" working actively on code for Requirements-Driven Development, Model Driven Architecture, Enterprise Change Management, and Systems and Software Development.
Sand said the resulting tools will be "minimal, complete and extensible," a system that works not just for software development but all "enterprise processes."
What we're moving toward is a world where everyone works together on everything, with the leaders being those who implement best. That's a world where U.S. manufacturers can compete.
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Talkback
Relationship to manufacturing...??
As for IT the solution is to accelerate the process. We seem to forget that there is fairly small number of countries that comapnies can outsource processes or other IT functions too. As countries like India and China grow so does the cost of labor and thus inflation. We are already beginning to see the companies moving from China to India and so forth.
benefits to outsource.
No point in paying $60 for manufacturing job in the US (isnt that what it costs GM). If GM did more manufacturing in Mexico, they would have been more competitive and probably would have had larger market share in the US and abroad.
Open source, not outsource
The article is about bringing the benefits of open source software development to manufacturing processes.
it depends on one's point of view
Second, its not proven that open source software development will help manufacturing. Just writing an article doesnt make it a FACT. Infact if you look at history, proprietary software has done more in a lot more industries than open source.
Open source however have open mouths who cant seem to keep them shut though. For even a minute contribution, they got to yell from the top of the world that they have achieved something.
Manufactuering's problems have nothing to do with IT...
J.Ja
Reply: Manufactuering's problems have nothing to do with IT...
points are well taken in concern with Labor
Costs, Retirement Package Costs, and down right
poor decision making on the part of Management
and Marketing. Never mind limited or no vision
for the future!
While I.T. and M.I.S. is not a panacea by any
stretch of the imagination, there are ways I.T.
and Open Source can help the Manufacturing
Industry rethink it's state and rebuild.
Since Labor will not be paid less for what they
do, let them do it some place else and bring in
Open Source Automation. Open Source as most
people know costs nothing or only requires a
donation of an unspecified amount. You decide
what it will cost. Since there is little or no
acquisition costs, Open Source is far more cost
effective to implement than say Microsoft
Windows. Just watch a milling machine or lathe
crash tooling on a "Fatal Exception Error"!
The Manufacturing Industry needs people who are
decisive and will stick by their decisions and
people. These people as a collective need to be
visionaries of the future for what their
respective corporation will look like 5 years
from now and beyond.
The Manufacturing Industry needs too, to set it's
people up for success and stop the petty-ante
finger pointing when things go wrong. Address
negative issues as a team not a an accuser
seeking to elevate themselves on the faults of
others.
So while I agree with some things you have said,
I think that more is at issue than just the
things you cite.
Manufacturing belongs to MS I'm afraid
xyz