The Rhino Times reports that Trump is promising to bring the furniture industry back to North Carolina.
This is interesting because it has now been a generation since the industry fled to foreign countries. That means many of those who previously worked in the industry here in the Triad have died or are now of retirement age. Those who were younger when the industry collapsed were forced to move on to other fields of endeavor.
That means many of those with the skill set to make the furniture industry thrive will no longer be available. In addition, those who possessed institutional knowledge and/or memory will not necessarily be able to help.
Many of those old plants can no longer be used for various reasons. I remember touring some of those plants years ago. We have to assume that the machinery has been removed or is no longer functional. And the buildings themselves might have been converted to other uses.
In order to locate this industry in the Triad, they would have to be building from the ground upward. Yes, the furniture manufacturers know how to build, equip and staff plants. But we can’t assume that we can snap our fingers, and pick up where it all ended.
The Clinton’s and others within the uniparty dealt a devastating blow to the Triad a couple of decades ago.
Yes, and that is a shame. The sine qua non of restarting an otherwise dead or dying industry is institutional knowledge By this I mean the collective knowledge, expertise, and information that is unique to an organization. It encompasses the insights, experiences, best practices, processes, and procedures accumulated over time by employees, leaders, and stakeholders within the organization.
Is that forever lost on NC’s furniture industry? Let’s hope it can be resurrected.
Great explanation of institutional knowledge, Fred.
Yes, I hope we can recover our former industrial might here in the Triad. That was our strength. And for those of us who are able to remember, the Triad used to be just as vibrant economically as Charlotte and the Triangle metro regions. We were on even par roughly. And then came NAFTA, China and the WTO.