Lead Angle

CTE Editor Alan Richter visited the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute at Chicago's Goose Island in September for a peek into the future of manufacturing at an event coordinated by Blaser Swisslube Inc.

Time for a literature review.

World-class manufacturers expand their production space for anticipated demand rather than attempting to catch up with current needs. This effort to always be ahead of the times was on display at Horn Technology Days, which took place June 17-19 and was hosted by Hartmetall-Werkzeugfabrik Paul Horn GmbH at its headquarters in Tübingen, Germany.

CTE Editorial Director Alan Rooks addresses reshoring in the final Lead Angle column of his 9-year career at Cutting Tool Engineering magazine.

When you consider the future of U.S. manufacturing, it's important to distinguish long term from short term.

I don't like bringing this up, but two key metalworking markets -- defense and energy -- are in a bit of trouble.

It goes without saying that the heart of manufacturing is innovation. From the cotton gin to the steam engine to the assembly line to the CNC, the manufacturing process is always being reinvented, refined and reimagined. Today, a lot of the talk is about additive manufacturing, and justifiably so.

Pundits have long said that U.S. machine shops and parts manufacturers need skilled candidates to fill thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of available jobs. The problem, it's alleged, is getting people interested in manufacturing in the first place.

For a guy like me who remembers when a landline telephone was the only way for an individual to share information immediately over long distances, today's world of infinite connectedness still has an otherworldly, "Alice in Wonderland" feel to it.

IMTS serves as a convenient benchmark for the health of the U.S. metalworking industry, allowing comparisons with the last go-round, and the ones before that.

Machine shop managers in various regions across the country say they have struggled to fill open positions, and that the job applicants they get often do not have the requisite skills. But the experience of one shop in Massachusetts suggests that the real problem isn't a lack of willing job applicants as much as it is a lack of pertinent training programs.

Ask any entrepreneur and he or she will tell you that getting from concept to reality isn't easy. It almost always requires a hellish amount of work, risks and disappointments.