Let’s look beyond 2019 predictions. Are manufacturers’ looking a decade down the road? Here are five trends that need to be on their radar, not just over the next 12 months, but in the coming years.
Two million manufacturing jobs could go unfilled by 2025 due to the skills gap. On the horizon lies a solution to manufacturers’ skilled worker shortage: the merging of global interconnectivity with Extended Reality (XR), which will help companies locate STEM-educated employees. Within a decade companies will be able to tap skilled workers across the globe to design products, work with engineers, and operate and maintain U.S.-based machines and equipment – in effect, a worldwide workforce will staff globally connected virtual-actual shop floors.
During the past year, I have interviewed many customers across a variety of manufacturing industries to learn more about their industry concerns, the design and manufacturing challenges they face, and the technologies that excite them. Here are some manufacturing and business trends to follow over the next 12–18 months.
Increased labor, transportation, and energy costs, coupled with stricter regulations and environmental concerns, have lead many manufacturers to rethink offshore manufacturing strategies. Although we are likely to see new government and trade policies that encourage local manufacturing, onshoring has been a growing trend for the last three to four years. This is likely to accelerate as manufacturers adopt digital technologies that allow products to be designed once and produced locally.
The number of manufacturing jobs in America increased by 4.8 percent between 2011 and 2016, preliminary statistics from a new federal report reveal. The increase, from 11.7 million to 12.3 million, was the good news highlighted Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
At the same time, however, the bureau also noted a less-favorable long-term trend: employment in apparel manufacturing decreased 85 percent over the last 25 years, from an average of 17.1 million in 1991 to 12.3 million in 2016. Even during the past five years, as manufacturing jobs increased overall, jobs in the garment industry continued to fall, declining 12.8 percent — the only manufacturing industry with a decrease of greater than 10 percent during that period. Among other segments showing declines between 2011 and 2016 were computer and electronic products (down 5.9 percent) and printing and related support activities (down 6.2 percent).