My two fellow bloggers have written about jobs, and I can't disagree with their points. Job creation is important both to the electorate and those they elect.

Unfortunately, the past decade hasn't been a stellar one for job creation. If you take a look at the private jobs in the U.S. in September 2009, a little over 109.1 million, and compare that to the number in September 1999, about 109.7 million, you are left with an empty feeling. If you consider that the overall population grew 9 percent during that same time, you have an even emptier feeling.

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On the day that everyone was rejoicing about the GDP growth in the third quarter of this year, I'm still thinking about an announcement that Swedish appliance giant Electrolux made earlier this week. Somehow, that doesn't strike me as being great news, particularly for Iowa residents and those metal fabricators and other suppliers that supply those factories.

One thing is for sure, globalization hasn't slowed down with the economic slowdown. Actually, I'm kind of stunned that more migration is taking place. I thought most of the "offshoring" and "nearshoring" decisions had been made by the multinational OEMs. Anecdotal evidence suggested that many parts once made in Asia were coming back so that supply chain managers could maintain greater control. Apparently, that isn't so.

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The perspective was unique, but the advice was familiar: Innovation is the key to remaining competitive on the world stage.

That was the message manufacturing experts with deep knowledge of the global marketplace sent to attendees at the Competitive Manufacturing Strategies session of the Pan IIT conference, a networking event for graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology, in Schaumburg, Ill., on Oct. 10. The panelists for the session, moderated by Mike Guerin, CEO, Amada America, were Ashutosh Padhi, a partner with McKinsey & Co.; Om Nalamasu, vice president of advanced technologies, Applied Materials; and Bharat Vedak, senior vice president, intelligent solutions group, Deere & Co.

Guerin set the stage for the discussion by describing the situation most fabricators face today: trying to deliver quality parts in a just-in-time fashion as orders become more varied and volumes continue to shrink.

Padhi didn't have comforting news for manufacturers in attendance. "The biggest wave of manufacturing offshoring is yet to come," he said.

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