On Wednesday, U.S. industrial conglomerate General Electric said it would keep its plant running in Rochester, New York, retaining all employees at the facility for now. The company was reportedly planning to close the plant by June 2018, and move the work to China, but GE said that it was determined best for its customers to keep operations in Rochester, and that the state government did not offer them any incentives. 

Most companies are constantly striving for more efficient, lean, working processes. Increasingly, the battle to save time and resources is being fought with machines and automation. 

With all the hype surrounding smart manufacturing, it’s easy to forget that implementing the technologies is really about running — and growing — the business. Though members of the C-suite may rarely interact directly with smart technologies, they are nonetheless vital to achieving the strategic objectives of the business.

Thermoelectric (TE) materials could play a key role in future technologies. Although the applications of these remarkable compounds have long been explored, they are mostly limited to high-temperature devices. Recently, researchers at Osaka University, in collaboration with Hitachi, Ltd., developed a new TE material with an improved power factor at room temperature.

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NASA wants to send a probe to an exoplanet to mark the 100th anniversary of Apollo 11. However, a brand new means of propulsion — and other advanced technologies — will be necessary if this project is to come to pass.

The largest generation in the U.S. is taking its place in manufacturing — and the experts are betting this tech-savvy cohort is ready to stir things up.

Thanks to strong bargaining power, the IG Metall union, which represents some 3.9 million workers in the metal and electrical industries is pushing for a 6 percent wage increase and a 28-hour work week for a two-year period.

Physicists at Rice University searching for an explanation for high-temperature superconductivity were surprised when their theoretical model pointed to the existence of a never-before-seen material in a different realm of physics.

Artificial intelligence and robotics are two "overnight successes" that have been decades in the making, and their intersection will soon change a multitude of industries.

A new artificial intelligence system at MIT is able to recognize higher-level patterns that are consistent across different recipes for producing types of materials.