A key theme in this year’s presidential race is competitiveness of American industry, though candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders tend to use more colorful language when describing their belief that the United States has lost its economic edge.

When President Obama took office, many had been arguing for years that U.S. manufacturing was facing an inexorable decline, that production in the U.S. was no longer competitive globally, and that the closure of factories all around the country was a part of the natural transition to an information economy. President Obama never accepted those arguments, having long understood that a country’s ability to make things is inextricably linked to a country’s ability to innovate. The President’s commitment began with rescuing the auto industry from the brink of collapse and saving more than 1 million American jobs, but it did not end there. 

If the folks at 3D Hubs are right, presidential candidates can stop fulminating about bringing back manufacturing from China or Bangladesh or wherever.

Technology will render such a shift inevitable. In the next decade, the whole business dynamic that makes it a good idea for a lot of U.S. companies to manufacture overseas will go poof. The very concept of a big honkin’ factory will eventually become as anachronistic as a typing pool.

Once upon a time, working in one of the manufacturing trades was perceived as a so-called "dirty job." Today, however, the reality of working in manufacturing is quite different – especially with all the advances in technology that have occurred in the past couple of decades.

This course focuses the supporting elements of a gearbox that allow gears and bearings to do their jobs most efficiently. Learn about seals, lubrication, lubricants, housings, breathers, and other details that go into designing gearbox systems.

With Europe witnessing a number of significant initiatives to facilitate a more sustained and competitive economy, such as Europe’s 2020 agenda for digitization, Horizon 2020 plan for R&D funding and the COP 21 for climate change, how do all these long-term strategies trickle down to the manufacturing sector, which currently accounts for 15.0% of Europe GDP ? And what technological innovations will arise on the shop floor to bolster production output and efficiency? Here, I will explore some of the key transformative forces identified in Frost & Sullivan’s upcoming research, "Future of Manufacturing in Europe," that are poised to disrupt Europe’s manufacturing sphere.

The March jobs report showed another month of healthy job creation in the United States as the economy added 215,000 jobs during the month, outpacing the 205,000 expectation.

Many sectors of the economy, including construction, government, education and health, added jobs in March, but manufacturing posted a steep loss of 29,000 jobs compared to expectations for a pickup of 2,000. 

From space, America’s rail system looks like a slice of brain tissue, with brightly lit train hubs and spokes standing in for neurons. Bit by bit, it’s starting to behave like one.

Take GE’s newest locomotive, the Tier 4, which is essentially a rolling data center. It carries more than 200 sensors that collect gigabytes of information about engine performance, exhaust, the fuel mix and rail conditions. The locomotive uses software to analyze the data and applies the insights to get smarter and run more efficiently. "The trains still work the same way physically, but we are dramatically enhancing our ability to deliver better outcomes by adding the digital components," says Seth Bodnar, chief digital officer of GE Transportation and the president of GE Transportation Digital Solutions, a new GE business unit based in Chicago.

A plot of land near the Stillwater National Refuge in Nevada has been the site of a geothermal power plant since 2009. Recent additions, however, have earned the site the distinction of being the world’s only power plant that combines geothermal with two types of solar power.

Our editors are currently in sunny California and will be broadcasting live from the Andretti Formula E. Paddock, taking us into the world of Formula E – the ground breaking FIA single-seater championship and world’s first fully-electric car racing series.

The British government scrambled Thursday to save the country’s struggling steel industry after Tata Steel announced plans to sell its U.K. plants, which employ almost 20,000 people.

A new three-year global forecast for the machine-tool market projects a 5.5% annual growth rate through 2019, driven particularly by expanding demand in China and other developing nations. The total market is given an estimated value of $181 billion by the end of the current three-year period.

Most motion applications use mechanical bearing guidance. However, there are many cases in which precision, angular repeatability, and geometric performance must be optimal, or submicron-bearing rumble is problematic. Air bearings offer distinct advantages in precision positioning, such as lacking backlash and having no static friction.

It seems every trade magazine I pick up nowadays has an article on Industry 4.0 or big data or the Internet of Things or the digital factory. These terms are being pitched around like a rugby ball and almost always with a decided lack of clear definitions.

The US ISM manufacturing index for March was up 2.3 points and reached 51.8, entering the expansionary territory for the first time since August 2015. Consensus forecast was for a rise to 51. Delving into details, new orders recorded the strongest growth, rising 6.8 points to 58.3, while production and the backlog of new orders rose 2.5 to 55.3 and 51 respectively.

Deere & Co. said Tuesday it has acquired a majority stake in Hagie Manufacturing, allowing the farm and construction machinery manufacturer to enter the high-clearance sprayer market. Deere does not currently produce a "high-clearance" sprayer, which allows farmers to spray fields with fertilizers and pesticides later in the growing season.

Conventional wisdom holds that as technology advances, the world gets smaller. For manufacturers, this has never been truer than it is now, thanks to the cloud. Manufacturing firms are moving to cloud-based ERP systems to access large amounts of critical data in real time anywhere along their supply chains, scale operations up or down as needed, all at reduced costs. But this is not the whole story. The ability to store and access critical data in the cloud is enabling new technologies that promise to transform manufacturing even more, and in the process allow firms of all sizes to access even more of the global economy.

It’s a pretty good time for anyone looking to buy or sell a manufacturing company. Experts expect a strong 2016 for merger and acquisition activity in the sector, though some said the year was off to a slight slow start.