An excellent article by MIT’s Bill Bonvillian, just out in the MIT Press journal Innovations.  Bill’s prescription:

The U.S. must develop an integrated strategy if it is to reinvent its production capability. It should include the nine steps listed below:

• Developing advanced technologies that could lead to new manufacturing paradigms
• Selecting manufacturing paradigms that apply across a range of sectors
• Integrating technology development with efforts to develop new processes and business models
• In doing this, encompassing the new combined services/production model
• Tracking where world production competitors are moving
• Building at all levels a new advanced manufacturing workforce
• Applying an organizational model that works across the seams between the R&D agencies
• Creating new regional public-private infrastructure for testbedding and implementation
• Tackling the financing problem for advanced manufacturing

Read the article here.