re: US manufacturing labor productivity annual increase rises to a fifteen-year high.

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One of the biggest threats to project performance is design engineering arrogance.

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Agreed. I came to Baton Rouge from Lake Chuck to dismantle and liquidate a brand new plant of Shell Chemical. Shell has opted to get out of plastics even while this unit was being built. My contact who remained with the unit was ecstatic that the design engineers involved maintenance in layout. "If you give me another foot here, I can get a carry deck crane to change a pump, motor of valve." Still there was a major heat exchanger with a structural diagonal member in the aay to pull the bundle for cleaning.

The unit made just enough product to fill orders and worked with second batch in the solution process. They did make 47 batches just to see what would happen with adjustments. Total investment in the new product was just under $1 billion, including $110 million to build the first unit. The polymer was discovered 50 years earlier but consumed too much of the palladium catalyst to be cost effective. As an accident a cocktail for the catalyst was developed which made it economical. Ford had developed an integral fuel tank/fuel pump all made from the same polymer. They were a bit pissed off about its cancellation. It was not degraded by hydrocarbons, and a method to install into existing casing to protect wells from corrosion was said to have been developed. It would have been in all of the gears in computer printers due it could rub against itself and not wear. Carpet fiber made from it would have produced commercial high traffic carpet lasting for 20 years.

Lawsuits in California against the deeper pockets for polybutylene piping is what got Shell to get out of polymers business. The lawsuits stemmed from the failure of a clip manufactured by a small third party.