As we begin to take our approximately 4 1/2 billionth trip around the sun, I’m reflecting on the previous 525,600 minutes and looking ahead to the new decade. The decade (the ‘20s), by the way, began last month, not a year ago, a factoid noted in a short address by Hiroyuki Hirano in 1999 as the world approached the cyber-perils of Y2K.

After listening to Hirano explain multiple overwhelming challenges that manufacturing would face in the next century (Y2K was not one of them), I naively asked him what countermeasures he would recommend to manufacturers. “Oh,” he quipped, “I tell my friends, don’t go into manufacturing. It’s just too difficult.” 

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