PROCEEDINGS - Industries of the Future - West Virginia - West ...

Inaugural Symposium Proceedings
SUMMARY, SYNERGIES, AND STRATEGIES FOR IOF-WV
Denise Swink
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Industrial Technologies
U.S. Department of Energy
It certainly is a pleasure to be here. Having listened to the wealth of information exchanged the
past couple of days, I want to share with you a little bit of the history of Industries of the Future
programs. I think there was a feeling of anxiousness in some of the work sessions, and I don't blame
you for being anxious.
Back in 1992 , the Office of Industrial Technologies was asked by the U.S. Congress, how do
we know we are making the most important investments for the United States for cost share technology
development with industry? The answer was, we didn’t. So the question became, how do you go
about finding out if you're making those right choices. We decided the key was that the government
shouldn't be making those choices. We have been making the choices for 20 years and we had
diminishing resources. So it was important to focus ourselves. We focused on the seven most energy
and waste-intensive manufacturing industries.
The novel thing was rather than us deciding what was good for those seven industries now and
in the future, we encouraged those seven industries to develop what they needed to be like in the future,
and then tell us how to facilitate the resources for them to achieve that vision. I emphasize to you that it
started in 1992. It is now 1997, which means we have been working hard on this for five years. It's
come differently with different industries. It took the chemical industry two years to issue its vision. It
took the steel industry about a year to develop its vision, and then about 18 months working on its road
map. Aluminum took about two years to get the vision but within nine months I believe they had the
first draft of a road map. It goes at a different pace depending on which group you're dealing with, but
I want to share with you the importance of being patient. This is a very new environment for you all to
be exchanging ideas and to be open with each other about what your needs and concerns are, so I
really encourage you to be patient. If you're patient and put the time into it, the fruits are remarkable.
I'm going to talk about those quickly and relate them to what we’ve been hearing— to show you that I
was actually listening to what you were sharing with us the past couple of days.
First of all, I think it is so important to listen to your customers. You may have your day-to-day
anxieties, but if you want to talk about where you're going to be 20 years from now, then you need to
listen to your customers. Allow me to explain to you why in my experience that has been so important.
The metal casting industry, which is 3000 small foundries in the United States, is one of the
partners in IOF. I had two meetings with 30 or so of the CEOs and presidents of that industry. They
kept telling me, Denise, we're just going to keep incrementally improving over time. That's what we've
done over the last 100 years, that’s what were going to do for the next 100 years. I kept on telling
them that I didn’t believe they were going to be here 20 years from now if they kept operating that way.
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