erhaps the strongest sign that Mexico's knowledge level is becoming as valued as its cost advantages came in late November 2004: U.S. President George W. Bush named a graduate of Monterrey Institute of Technology's Queretaro campus — Cuban-born former Kellogg Co. CEO Carlos Gutierrez — as the new U.S. Secretary of Commerce.
      That Institute's Chihuahua campus happens to be the location of Visteon's new 53,821-sq.-ft. (5,000-sq.-m.) technical center and office facility, which employs 200. The company has approximately 11,200 employees and 15 facilities in six states of the Mexican Republic. The project is just getting under way at the same time the Ford spinoff is offering a "voluntary termination incentive" to many of its white-collar employees in Michigan and elsewhere.
      Mexico's total maquiladora count was 2,823 in May 2004, still way down from 3,630 at its peak in 2001. But the time is past when maquilas had the monopoly on foreign investment. Direct foreign investment in Mexico during the first half of 2004 exceeded US$10 billion, and the trend everyone is talking about is an upward migration in skill level that is not only enticing corporations, but even drawing back some skilled workers who may have gone elsewhere in the past seeking opportunity.
      That said, even a manufacturing technician wage approaching US$5 an hour is considered eminently feasible by most corporate decision-makers -and made all the more so by the general rise in manufacturing sophistication. All of which plays well into U.S. President George W. Bush's plan to introduce a work permit system for Mexican workers in the U.S.
      John Riley, CEO of San Diego- and Tijuana-based shelter company BC Manufacturing, has been working in and educating about the Mexican industrial marketplace for many years, and says the level of work is indeed rising, even if misperceptions about knowledge and education level still persist.
      "People are taking a look for the longer term for design and R&D," he says. "The infrastructure is there from an electronics standpoint, and we're going to see more and more of that."He says the trend may help reduce the flow of illegal immigration. And it may be driven by another immutable fact: The aging of the U.S. work force.
      "We have to be cognizant that the U.S. is an aging country, and a lot of the manufacturing skills are not as abundant as they used to be," he says. "Mexico is young, people are now much more educated, and they're beginning to fill the vacuum where they're needed."
      That observation is backed by NAI's trend analysis for the year ahead, which identifies plant complexity and a stand-alone manufacturing model that incorporates engineering and R&D at the factory level as salient attributes of the Mexican industrial marketplace.
      In October 2004 remarks on the Latin American market, Gary Swedback, president of NAI Mexico, noted the continuing rapid industrial growth in Tijuana, Juarez and Reynosa. He also mentioned Mexico's first free trade zone (FTZ) in San Luis Potosi, Logistik, positioned to help companies reach the NAFTA market. The FTZ's strategy is to be an inland multimodal port, taking advantage of the access to the Pacific Port of Manzanillo, as well as the Gulf port of Tampico. If that sounds a lot like the business plan at AllianceTexas north of Dallas, it may be no accident: Dallas-based HKS is the architectural firm for both.