Mark Y. Wang

Is U. S. high-technology manufacturing at risk? In response to the concern that an increasing amount of high-technology manufacturing formerly performed in the United States is now being done overseas, the Office of Science and Technology Policy asked the Rand Corporation to provide analytic support to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. The support included a description of past and current trends of U. S. high-tech manufacturing, a theoretical and empirical economic analysis of traditional and high-tech manufacturing, and an analysis of U. S. research and development statistics and of trends in choices of academic disciplines.

In June 1998, U. S. Vice President Al Gore and the National Partnership for Reinventing Government presented a team of U. S. Army logisticians and RAND analysts the Hammer Award in recognition of a great accomplishment: streamlining army logistics. For decades, the performance of army logistics fell progressively behind best commercial practices. Army mechanics would wait on average a month for spare parts from distant supply depots in order to repair a down weapon system. Today a high-velocity, streamlined army supply process delivers spare parts in half the time it took to deliver them just 3 years earlier. In fact, these days it acutally takes less time to get a spare part from an army supply depot than from a commercial vendor.