Given Sony's reputation for manufacturing excellence, this news is dismaying.

FORBES: Humbled Colossus

But manufacturing excellence is its crucial edge.

ECONOMIST: Manufacturing in Europe: How to make it | The

Each Institute will serve as a regional hub of manufacturing excellence, providing the innovation infrastructure to support regional manufacturing hubs and ensuring that our manufacturing sector is a key pillar in an economy that is built to last.

WHITEHOUSE: President Obama Speaks on Manufacturing

The President will announce a new proposal for a National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, to build a network of up to fifteen Institutes for Manufacturing Innovation around the country, serving as regional hubs of manufacturing excellence that will help to make our manufacturers more competitive and encourage investment in the United States.

WHITEHOUSE: President Obama Speaks on Manufacturing

The NAMII will provide the innovation infrastructure needed to support new additive manufacturing technology and products in order to become a global center of excellence for additive manufacturing.

WHITEHOUSE: The White House

At the time, it fired the imagination of managers who had been told over and over again that excellence in manufacturing had become the exclusive preserve of the Japanese.

ECONOMIST: The fine art of being prepared

The Rolls-Royce Crosspointe facility is a center of excellence for advanced manufacturing of precision-engineered engine discs and other components for some of the most sophisticated aircraft in the world.

WHITEHOUSE: Vice President's Schedule

MPs also concluded the bundling together of train manufacture and financing in large procurement exercises would skew the market towards larger multinational firms, possibly at the expense of excellence in train design and domestic manufacturing.

BBC: Bombardier report: Credit rating 'settled rail deal'

One of the world's most conspicuously successful centres of enterprise lies in that bit of California known as Silicon Valley: computing is today's knowledge-based industry par excellence (see survey) The new jobs in tomorrow's industries, in manufacturing and services alike, will call for more than button-pressing automatons.

ECONOMIST: Education and the wealth of nations | The

And that requires excellence in design and IP first and foremost, and then remarkable prowess is purchasing, logistics, manufacturing, and operations.

FORBES: Apple Hysteria: Focus Instead on Astonishing Numbers and Core Strategy