It all started with a blog post by The FABRICATOR®'s Senior Editor Tim Heston: The moral imperative of U.S. manufacturing. The post discussed the manufacturing supply chain and how the U.S. must rebuild its infrastructure to compete in the global marketplace. It led to posts by Editor-in-Chief Dan Davis and TPJ-The Tube & Pipe Journal®'s Editor Eric Lundin, who also had something to say about the topic, and it became the focus of the April "Fabricating Update" e-newsletter.

The newsletter quoted some of Heston's remarks, including: "I'd say it's a moral imperative that we again build our U.S. manufacturing infrastructure so we can respond to companies like Apple, with skilled workers and automaton. (As New York Times Reporter David Barboza reported on NPR), in the 1990s a California factory, full of automation, used to produce Apple computers. Surely, such flexible automation could be employed again. Apple has amazing market dominance and eye-popping production volumes. When you combine those two factors, some incredible manufacturing technology innovations may occur. (OK, the global market may not work like that, but the idealist in me sometimes wishes it did.)"

We asked "Fabricating Update" readers whether it is idealistic to think the U.S. can again build its manufacturing infrastructure to respond to companies like Apple. Here's what they had to say: (more...)