How AI, sustainability and politics are reshaping the future of 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.