Dear friends,
It has been a very tiring months for me, as we usually had
during the last two months of the year. Nevertheless, I think I need to write
again as to sharpen my thoughts. Sometimes when we are a bit busy doing our
operational routine work, the mind can be a bit blunt.
Today, I would like to write about the value of
manufacturing activities to our society. The true economic value is created
when there are tangible things being produced. Value is always attached with
tangible products. Only recently we’re being told that value is also created by
services rendered. As I’ve understand it, service do not create value, it just
enhance the existing value. The true initial economic value is created through
engineering process, whether mechanically or etcetera (but of course, a
physical being has their own value albeit a lesser one). The service we
attached to it, can further enhanced the value.
I read an article saying that the U.S started to have
structural economic problems when they started to outsourced their
manufacturing activities elsewhere and truly focus on services sector. In the
end, there nothing left for America, except for a clever advertising and
financial services, among others. These advertising and financial services
actually do not have any tangible product to back their value creation
activities. They create value out of nothing, actually. When the financial
sector encountered problems, the economy does not have a strong backup from the
manufacturing activities that truly hold a value with their tangible products.
The situation in Germany is quite different. Germany, on the other hand, is
fully equipped with a strong manufacturing sector to withstand turmoil in the
financial sector. This is because; the true value is kept within the
manufacturing sector.
Understanding this principle, it is very important for the
country to produce more and more technical people. We need more graduates with technical
background to be churned out from our education system. The importance of these
technical graduates is being manifest by the success of these graduates in the
job market.
We need more technical people and less social science
graduates. We need more engineering graduates and less MBA holders. J
