During the depths of the manufacturing slowdown that has cost the fabricated metal products sector nearly 300,000 jobs since 2000, Steven Southwell, president of Des Plaines, Ill.-based Nu-Way Industries Inc., faced a depressing challenge from one of his multinational OEM customers??either meet the ??total cost of acquisition? achieved in China or purchase the part from the Chinese supplier, inventory it, and incorporate it into the family of parts supplied by Nu-Way.

The ramming machine bores into the side of the new automobile at a speed of 50 kilometers (31 miles) per hour. Within a fraction of a second, sensors situated all over the test dummy signal details of the stress load. Shortly afterward the overall results of the Euro-NCAP crash test will appear in all the specialized automobile magazines.