full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Olivier Scalabre: The next manufacturing revolution is here

Unscramble the Blue Letters

It's not as if we've done nothing with manufacturing since the last revolution. Actually, we've made some pterty lame attempts to try to revitalize it. But none of them have been the big ovuaherl we really need to get us growing again. For example, we've tried to relocate our factories orhfsfoe in order to reduce cost and take aavtdange of cheap labor. Not only did this not inspire productivity, but it only saved money for a short period of time, because cheap labor didn't stay cheap for long. Then, we've tried to make our factories lraegr and we specialized them by product. The idea was that we can make a lot of one product and sokclptie it to be sold with demand.

Open Cloze

It's not as if we've done nothing with manufacturing since the last revolution. Actually, we've made some ______ lame attempts to try to revitalize it. But none of them have been the big ________ we really need to get us growing again. For example, we've tried to relocate our factories ________ in order to reduce cost and take _________ of cheap labor. Not only did this not inspire productivity, but it only saved money for a short period of time, because cheap labor didn't stay cheap for long. Then, we've tried to make our factories ______ and we specialized them by product. The idea was that we can make a lot of one product and _________ it to be sold with demand.

Solution

  1. pretty
  2. offshore
  3. stockpile
  4. overhaul
  5. advantage
  6. larger

Original Text

It's not as if we've done nothing with manufacturing since the last revolution. Actually, we've made some pretty lame attempts to try to revitalize it. But none of them have been the big overhaul we really need to get us growing again. For example, we've tried to relocate our factories offshore in order to reduce cost and take advantage of cheap labor. Not only did this not inspire productivity, but it only saved money for a short period of time, because cheap labor didn't stay cheap for long. Then, we've tried to make our factories larger and we specialized them by product. The idea was that we can make a lot of one product and stockpile it to be sold with demand.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
manufacturing revolution 6
fourth manufacturing 3
big manufacturing 2
manufacturing revolutions 2
cheap labor 2
large technological 2
advanced robots 2
lead time 2
trade flows 2
emerging economies 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
fourth manufacturing revolution 2

Important Words

  1. advantage
  2. attempts
  3. big
  4. cheap
  5. cost
  6. demand
  7. factories
  8. growing
  9. idea
  10. inspire
  11. labor
  12. lame
  13. larger
  14. long
  15. lot
  16. manufacturing
  17. money
  18. offshore
  19. order
  20. overhaul
  21. period
  22. pretty
  23. product
  24. productivity
  25. reduce
  26. relocate
  27. revitalize
  28. revolution
  29. saved
  30. short
  31. sold
  32. specialized
  33. stay
  34. stockpile
  35. time