When innovation comes to mind, the first thing people might think of is creativity, spontaneity or a momentary stroke of genius. But can innovation occur out of a structured, repeatable process? The answer, in short, is yes.

Quality is an everyday conversation on the manufacturing floor. Performance measures such as first-pass yield, reject rates, and scrap and rework are displayed on white boards at cells and assembly lines, ruthlessly analyzed and targeted for improvement. Quality tools abound.

To put it mildly, today's ERP is not what it was a decade ago. In terms of mobility, speed and actionable intelligence, technology was in its infancy at the turn of the century.

Pushing the limits of an aging infrastructure, U.S. manufacturers face a future of increasing costs and instability unless new technologies and new investments can rejuvenate the system.

This year, Vermeer Corp. is celebrating the 15th anniversary of its lean journey, a remarkable milestone given one of the words President and CEO Mary Andringa uses to describe the continuous-improvement methodology. "Fragile" is the word.

As the former CFO of such companies as Sprint, Eastman Kodak Co. and Unisys Corp., as well as vice president of finance of General Electric Co.'s plastics division, Robert Brust's management philosophy was to bring procurement into the finance department, at times meeting daily with the purchasing team to go over expenditures line by line.

If you're a CEO who thinks lean and Six Sigma can be left to the plant manager or a continuous-improvement (CI) specialist simply to improve factory operations, think again.

To remain competitive in today's fast-paced, global environment, manufacturers are adopting newly designed, high-speed wireless networks to help take better control of plant operations. Engineers and operators are being armed with iPads, laptops and high-speed scanners running on these networks to bring their facilities up-to-date with instantaneous, real-time communication.

President Obama and his Republican challengers are ramping up their rhetoric about creating more manufacturing jobs in the United States. The question is, will employees be ready for manufacturing?

Mexico, the United States' southern neighbor offers transportation distances a fraction of those from Asia, a labor force a good deal cheaper than domestic workers, and a country causing fewer headaches about intellectual property and other trade concerns. But in recent years, drug-related violence along the border has caused some manufacturers to be more cautious about making the move to Mexico.