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The definition of high-tech manufacturing is vague and varies depending on the industry. It includes products with printed circuit boards or advanced chemical manufacturing. The term originated in the mid-20th century to describe world-changing technologies, but it has evolved over time. Attempts to refine the definition have been unsuccessful due to the variability of industries and marketing tactics.
High-tech manufacturing is an extremely large and poorly defined segment of the modern manufacturing industry. Exactly which products are considered high tech is a vague concept left to marketing departments. In its broadest definition, high-tech manufacturing involves printed circuit boards or advanced chemical manufacturing. This makes everything from cancer medicine and laptops to coffee makers and aspirin high-tech. Some industries and economists have attempted to narrow the classification, but have had little success.
The term “high tech” originated in the mid-20th century. The term was used to describe world-changing technologies, such as atomic energy, mass-produced televisions, and the integrated circuit, that were becoming commonplace. These technologies were so advanced that people saw them as a whole new level of technology, beyond any that existed before.
As technologies came and went, the term kept evolving around it. At one point, betamax players, laserdiscs and 8-track systems were all considered high tech and the processes used to make them were of high tech manufacturing. As these technologies became obsolete they ceased to be high tech and the technologies that followed were the new high tech. These technologies have also been abandoned, and eventually, the high-tech systems that are used today will fall by the wayside before even more advanced technologies.
Since the term high-tech has such a variable meaning, high-tech manufacturing does as well. In most cases, if an item uses circuit boards, microchips or advanced pharmaceutical processes, it falls into this type of manufacturing. These definitions were created at a time when these technologies were less common than they are today. Now, a huge portion of the manufacturing world would fall into these categories.
In an effort to further classify the high-tech manufacturing industry, many groups have attempted to refine the current definition. While some of these definitions sounded promising, such as using age-based or cost-based analytics, they all fall apart when applied to certain industries. For example, many of the technologies used in the creation and production of a space shuttle have not changed in decades, but claims that the space shuttle is not a high-tech object are likely to meet opposition.
Deciding what high-tech manufacturing is and isn’t is also made more difficult by the marketing used to sell new products. To make a product seem more advanced than its counterparts, marketers will use heavy words, like high tech, to describe it. Over time, these words lose their impact and are replaced, just like the items they advertise.
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