Issue #24 - The Future of Manufacturing

Massive supply chain shocks

We want to bring more manufacturing back to the USA but we have to acknowledge the reality that the industry looks a lot different know than it has in the past. Industry 4.0 requires different technical skills. In addition to implementing efficient new solutions, we need to train people to use them.

Even before COVID-19, many parts of the manufacturing industry were experiencing detrimental labor shortages. The use of automation and other systems that allow for distributed manufacturing would permit greater flexibility in where manufacturing sites were located.

This is not to say that China’s manual laborers are safe. Drones for deploying pesticides on farms, warehouse robots for unpacking trucks, and vision-enabled robots for factory quality control will all dramatically reduce the jobs in these sectors. And Chinese companies are indeed investing heavily in all of the above. The country is already the wo

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