`Unmeasured' Role of Manufacturing.

Aerospace manufacturer McDonnell Douglas changed the process for making landing-gear bulkheads for the C-17 transport in order to take advantage of high-speed machining.

Under the new procedure, bulkheads are made with two pans, rather than 72, and require only 35 fasteners to hold them together, rather than 1,720 under the previous method. Furthermore, machining was completed 15 times faster.

Examples like that are brought to the fore in "Producing Prosperity -- Manufacturing Technology's Unmeasured Role in Economic Expansion," a new study sponsored by AMT -- The Association for Manufacturing Technology.

"Machine tools and technologies other than computers and microprocessors receive inadequate credit for America's prosperity," says the study's author, Joel Popkin of Washington, D.C.-based economic consultant Joel Popkin & Co.

The analysis reveals that between 1956 and 1996, multifactor productivity in manufacturing grew about 40% faster than did similarly measured productivity in the overall (nonfarm) economy.

AMT president Don F. Carlson, CMTSE, says that there had grown a "puzzling gap between what traditional economics was telling us about productivity and what the economy has actually done." The new study "allows us to see the light."

The study points to such savings as cars with higher fuel efficiency (U.S. consumers saved $50-billion in 1999), reduced maintenance needs (($21-billion in 1998) and savings from lower electricity bills for energy-efficient refrigerators and air conditioners ($19.6-billion in 1997).

AMT -- The Assn. for Mfg. Technology, McLean, Va. 703-893-2900.