The tiny Tata Nano, the world's cheapest car, is no Cadillac. But the plant where it is made is.

With the help of Milwaukee-based Rockwell Automation, the Nano factory in western India is one of the smartest in the world. The plant in Gujarat manages every sensor, microchip and motor control. It can predict when the assembly line will falter before it happens. It can order parts from suppliers on its own. It can track every part that goes into every car, allowing Tata to trace defective parts rapidly.

The Gujarat factory is a productive marvel and a new challenge to American manufacturers.

Keith Nosbusch, chief executive at Rockwell, is concerned that American factories aren't keeping up — and that the federal government isn't moving fast enough to provide incentives.

"It's very worrisome. They do not want to be second rate," Nosbusch said, referring to the Asian tigers. "They want to be world class."

The question is: Do we? The recent record doesn't offer much hope.

Congress allowed the research and development tax credit to expire at the end of last year, a credit that should be made permanent. And while Europe poured more than a billion euros into a factory research program last year, the United States stripped out $500 million for "smart process manufacturing" from the federal stimulus package before it reached the desk of President Barack Obama. And while Chinese R&D expenditures soar, America's are flat.

A white paper earlier this year from the Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership noted that while government has offered manufacturers "a disjointed set of interventions" in recent years, the nation does not have a focused manufacturing policy.

Ideally, a focused federal policy agenda would encourage lean manufacturing, do more to help companies export their goods, encourage a move toward greener, more sustainable processes and tie federal research funding to technology transfer. The government also should clear the backlog at the U.S. Patent Office and conduct a thorough review of the patent process.

Nosbusch's concerns are legitimate. Once, only assembly-line jobs seemed to be at risk. Now, research and development is moving increasingly offshore as well. The United States cannot take its manufacturing might for granted.