As manufacturers plot their paths forward, many are paying closer attention to supply chain resiliency and the need for stronger, tech-enabled supply chains that can withstand shocks. The global pandemic upended most of the business world, with a particularly pronounced…
We can learn a lot from history. In the face of a global pandemic that has upended the business world, the measures taken in the short-term will lead to significant shifts that will last for decades. We saw how the…
PTA Plastics has invested more than $2 million in six new injection molding machines—four Wittmann Battenfeld’s and two Engel’s—that it will divide between its facilities in Colorado and Connecticut. In total, the company acquired four machines from Wittmann Battenfeld and two from…
A major shock to supply chain operations, COVID-19 exposed the weaknesses of the current supply chain paradigm and forced firms to consider the challenges of rebuilding their supply chains due to supplier exits. For some industries, the pandemic even forced a major…
What products and components offer the biggest opportunities for reshoring? What advanced manufacturing technology is needed to enable the reshoring? To what degree did the pandemic disrupt supply chains, and how did it affect sourcing? To answer these questions and…
The novel coronavirus pandemic, along with the various shutdowns and slowdowns it caused, taught a lot of people whose jobs rub up against the supply chain some valuable lessons in 2020. As millions of businesses worldwide look to the new…
One of the surest methods for equitably reinforcing the U.S. economy is through the repatriation of overseas manufacturing jobs. Long desired, reshoring actually started in earnest prior to the pandemic, though it certainly gained momentum last year. There are many…
The Biden-Harris transition website posts Biden’s policy for U.S. manufacturing and for addressing supply chain shortages due to Covid19. But can we take what is written at face value? Like all politicians’ statements, this one is high-level, sweeping verbiage with little or no…
A trade war with China and the disruptive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have U.S. companies starting to question a decades-old strategy of shifting manufacturing operations to low-cost labor markets in China and other Asian nations. Some are starting to…
I’ve learned a great deal about the US economy during my time as an intern at the Reshoring Institute. The industry that I’ve learned the most about is manufacturing. In particular, I’ve learned how important women are to the manufacturing…
COVID, COVID, COVID. As I sat down to write my usual year-end review of plastics in the medical space, that’s what ran through my mind. Of course, there was nothing remotely normal about 2020, thanks to a once-in-a-century global pandemic.…
If designers are the fuel for packaging innovation, packaging production engineers are the engines that make it run — and as efficiently as possible. This may have been an atypical year in a lot of ways, but the country and…
The coronavirus pandemic snarled the world's sprawling supply chains for months, shutting factories, disrupting shipping and making it difficult for companies to get products from factories to consumers. Now, many companies are considering changing the model to avoid future product…
Are we there yet? Many of us look forward to putting 2020 in the rearview mirror. We long for a world post-pandemic. It’s been a challenging year for all industries, even those that experienced a boon during these precarious…
TRADE war and Covid-19 pandemic have exposed the complexity of managing supply chain. In managing supply chain, it is all about finding the right parts from the right suppliers at the right price and mitigating supply constraint risk through second…
It doesn’t seem that long ago, but it was, (October of 2018) that I wrote an article called “What’s Going on at Wally World”, based on the Section 301 tariffs being imposed on Chinese imports, and how it was affecting…
The pandemic has shown that supply chains will need to be rethought, with more emphasis put on supplier diversification, domestic production, and stockpiling. The challenge will be to strike a balance ensuring that a targeted and limited industrial policy does…
As politically polarized as the United States is right now, virtually everyone agrees on one thing. With millions unemployed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation urgently needs to create good jobs. In response, Washington appears to be…
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a seismic shift in the global economic landscape as manufacturers move toward more local production and distribution. As supply chains become shorter and more transparent, the combination of edge computing and Industrial IoT (IIoT) devices will help…
Innovation and technology helped manufacturers meet the immediate challenges in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The outcome was both a lesson in bipartisan cooperation and a living case study on the value of Industry 4.0 principles and solutions.…