Because automation can produce more with less, it can help domestic manufacturers compete with low-cost overseas labor. It’s certainly a valid premise. But, like golf, dancing, baking bread or cutting dovetails by hand, implementing automation is harder than it looks.

In 1961, the first industrial robot was installed at a GM factory in Ewing Township, NJ, to lift hot pieces of metal from a die-casting machine. Today, the automotive industry has the largest number of robots working in factories around the world.

Manufacturers in multiple industries worldwide are increasingly thinking about sustainability, resource conservation and their impact on the environment.

In the past 20 years, the global economy has suffered through many difficult events, such as pandemics, conflicts and natural disasters. For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered one of the worst job crises since the Great Depression.

What gets you out of bed in the morning? Whatever the reason, new evidence suggests that people who work in manufacturing are more eager to get up and go than people in other professions.

Just a few years ago, much of the business community viewed climate advocates with indifference, skepticism or even outright hostility. 

Shoichiro Toyoda, who led Toyota Motor Co.’s expansion into North America and set the company on a path to becoming one of the world’s most powerful automakers, died Feb. 14 at 97.

Numerous studies have mostly debunked the notion that robotics and automation adversely affect manufacturing jobs.

During the past few years, U.S. manufacturers have massively increased their investment in robots.

Good news! U.S. manufacturers employed 12,922,000 people in October, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That’s 4 percent more than in October 2021 and 13 percent more than in April 2020, the manufacturing employment low point of the COVID recession.