Manufacturing
From heavy industry to homegrown businesses, manufacturing is part and parcel with modern living. But new innovations and logistical challenges could transform the field — with significant consequences for brands, businesses, institutions, and consumers.
The “death of manufacturing” in the U.S. is one of those tropes that has made headlines for decades. But manufacturing in the U.S. could look different in the next decade, where output continues to grow while jobs continue to fall.
What the Future: Manufacturing explores a future that will be shaped by macro forces like increased automation and employee power shifts, and by attitudes and tensions between nationalism and globalism, and between sustainability and affordability.
Read on for an exclusive look at the business questions that manufacturers large and small will face in the coming years, including how small business manufacturing will survive, whether we will get to a more sustainable future, and how the industry will staff and train from a shrinking talent pool and a more automated workforce.
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Letter from the Editor
How AI, geopolitics, and sustainability are changing how we make things Matt Carmichael, What the Future editor, head of the Ipsos Trends & Foresight Lab |
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Shifts
The changes in people, markets and society that will shape the future Trevor Sudano Principal, Ipsos Strategy3 |
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Interviews & Features
How tech is helping companies future-proof their supply chains Scott DeGroot, vice president of Global Distribution and Planning, Kimberly-Clark Corporation |
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How to align ESG with what matters most to Americans Brand insights from Ipsos’ Trent Ross |
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How we can keep small manufacturing “Made in the USA” Rob McMillan, founder, Dearborn Denim |
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Why Americans’ attitudes on globalization are in flux Brand insights from Ipsos’ Jennifer Bender |
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How companies can mine technology for the energy transition Denise Johnson, group president, Resource Industries, Caterpillar |
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How human-robot partnerships will remake manufacturing Anders Billesø Beck, vice president, strategy and Innovation at Universal Robots A/S |
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Americans have mixed feelings about automation in the workforce Brand insights with Ipsos’ Jennifer Berg |
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How organized labor will fit into a reorganized economy Brand insights from Ipsos’ Annaleise Azevedo Lohr |
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Brand insights from Ipsos’ Sophie Washington |
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Read next → |
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