Reuters
U.S. manufacturing activity eased off an 11-year low in May, the strongest sign yet that the worst of the economic downturn was behind as businesses reopen, though the recovery from the COVID-19 crisis could take years because of high unemployment.  

AP via Daily Herald
Unemployment rates fell in 38 states, rose in three and were largely unchanged in nine, according to the Labor Department. The disparities ranged from Nevada, with the highest rate (25.3%), Hawaii (22.6%) and Michigan (21.2%), to Nebraska (5.2%) with the lowest and Utah (8.5%). The overall U.S. unemployment rate in May was still high at 13.3%, a decline from 14.7% in April.

Area Development
Alcorta Forging Group, a 100-year-old Basque Spain-based automotive supplier, plans to establish its first U.S. manufacturing operations and regional headquarters in Marysville, Ohio. The company will invest $15 million and plans to create 50 new jobs with a potential expansion to double in 5 years, pending state and local approvals.

Canadian Manufacturing
The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how manufacturing is essential to the Canadian economy, especially during a national emergency. It also has an important role to play during recovery and into the future. Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters (CME) has launched a three-phased strategy called “Manufacturing our Future” to relaunch manufacturing as a driver of economic prosperity.

Forbes
Every industry is hurting from the global pandemic. But despite the many uncertainties as we venture into the unknown, this new reality will have both short-term and long-term effects on the manufacturing industry, and more so on small manufacturers.

Reuters
Electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc. wants to start building a large vehicle assembly plant in the southwestern United States as early as the third quarter of this year, the company told Texas officials in documents made public this week. 

Industry Week
As factories around the U.S. reopen and ramp up production, it has become increasingly clear that COVID-19 has changed the manufacturing ecosystem in ways that will be felt long after the pandemic has passed. Growing trade tensions stemming from the pre-COVID era combined with massive supply chain disruptions over the past few months are leading to fundamental changes on the factory floor.

Online July 14-15, 2020
This course provides a solid and fundamental understanding of gear geometry, types and arrangements, and design principles.  Starting with the basic definitions of gears, conjugate motion, and the Laws of Gearing, those attending will be given the tools needed to understand the inter-relation and coordinated motion operating within gear pairs and multi-gear trains. Basic gear system design process and gear measurement and inspection techniques will also be explained. In addition, the fundamentals of understanding the step-wise process of working through the iterative design process required to generate a gear pair will be reviewed, and attendees will also briefly discuss the steps and issues involved in design refinement and some manufacturing considerations. Also, an explanation of basic gear measurement techniques, how measurement equipment and test machines implement these techniques, and how to interpret the results from these basic measurements will be covered.

 Autocar
Mercedes-Benz’s AMG performance division has detailed a new electrically assisted exhaust gas turbocharger system that will appear on its next generation of models. Claimed to draw on technology originally developed by AMG’s High Performance Powertrain for Mercedes’ Formula 1 engine, it is planned to replace the exhaust-gas-driven turbo set-ups presently used by AMG on both its 2.0-litre four-cylinder and 4.0-liter V8 engines.

Riviera
Employing newly developed electrically assisted turbocharging, MTU solves turbo lag, improving engine agility and environmental performance.

Electrive
Nissan has announced a collaboration with Chinese company Sunwoda Electric Vehicle Battery to develop next-generation batteries for its e-Power vehicles jointly. The negotiations also include a production system to ensure a stable supply capacity for the shared cells.

Industrial Machinery Digest
Originally launched in 2015 to assist workers in lightweight assembly tasks, ABB’s collaborative YuMi robot has gone on to blaze a trail in a raft of diverse applications and industries, opening new opportunities and helping to fire people’s imaginations about what can be achieved with robotic automation.

Electrive
Volkswagen has announced an increase in its stake at QuantumScape. The car company is investing up to another 200 million dollars in the U.S. battery specialist. The aim to advance the joing development of solid-state batteries and to prepare for their large-scale production.

Today’s Motor Vehicles
Oechsler, an engineering solutions provider and one of the largest parts manufacturers in the additive industry, and HP, the leader in industrial 3D printing solutions, announced a new alliance to help accelerate the mass production of 3D printed parts. The companies are working together across the product lifecycle, from new design to final parts production, to develop breakthrough applications for customers in industries such as automotive, home, and commercial appliances and medical devices.

Newswire
New Flyer of America, Inc. a subsidiary of NFI Group Inc., announced it will deploy North America’s first automated heavy-duty transit bus with the Connecticut Department of Transportation. The automated driving demonstration project will include the deployment of three forty-food battery-electric, Xcelsior CHARGE™ heavy-duty transit buses.

Automotive World
MAN’s first electric bus was unveiled back in 1920. Now, 50 years later, MAN Truck & Bus is launching a state-of-the-art, fully electric series vehicle in the form of the MAN Lion City E. The first mass-produced customer vehicles will be delivered in the last quarter of 2020.

Industry Week
When manufactures understand how to leverage data, it has the power to dramatically change customer engagement.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive
Several manufacturers during COVID-19 have actually experienced significant increases in sales revenues because the demand for U.S.-based suppliers has increased. The global supply chain has been interrupted during the pandemic and there is an effort to re-shore and source goods from domestic manufactures.

Industry Week
Manufacturers find joy, adventure and challenge as America sets its sights on launching humans into space.

New Atlas
The pursuit of next-generation battery architectures has scientists exploring all kinds of alternative materials, and one that has been seen as a great candidate for some time is silicon. Using the plentiful element as a lithium-ion battery’s anode could significantly improve its energy density, and scientists in Korea have now come up with a solution to one of the key hurdles standing in its way.