M SCOTT BRAUER
After all, Love and his colleagues created a new method for making batches of certain types of drugs. That’s manufacturing; it’s an innovation leading directly to production, and the small size of the operation means it won’t get shipped overseas. And, as Love enjoys pointing out, his team’s innovation is hardly the first case of using living cells to make a product for nearby consumption. Your local craft brewery is actually a modestly sized manufacturer that won’t be shipping its jobs overseas either.
“The emerging generation of manufacturing has this new equilibrium between automation (machines, robots), human work, and software and data.”
John Hart
“Innovation can come from anywhere,” Love says. “What you really need is access to production. This is something Suzanne has been thinking about for a long time—that proximity. The same thing can happen in biomanufacturing. If I have a great idea for a new drug or food product or new material, if I have to ship it off somewhere to figure out if I can make it or not, I lose time, I lose momentum, I lose financing. I need that manufacturing to be super close.”
New manufacturing can come in multiple forms and, yes, can include robots and other forms of automation. The issue is complex. Robots do replace workers, in the aggregate. But if they increase productivity, firms that are early adopters of robots grow more than other firms and employ more people, as economic studies in France, Spain, and Canada have shown. The wager is that a sensible deployment of robots leads to more overall growth. Meanwhile, US firms added more than 34,000 robots in workplaces in 2024; China added nearly 300,000. Berger hopes US firms won’t be technology laggards, as that could lead to an even steeper decline in the manufacturing sector. Instead, she encourages manufacturers to use robots productively to stay ahead of the competition.
“The emerging generation of manufacturing has this new equilibrium between automation (machines, robots), human work, and software and data,” Hart says. “A lot of the interesting opportunities in manufacturing, I think, come from the combination of those capabilities to improve productivity, improve quality, and make manufacturing more flexible.”
Another form of new manufacturing may happen at firms that, like the old heavyweight corporations, see value in keeping research and development in-house. At the Initiative for New Manufacturing launch event in May, one of the speakers was JB Straubel, founder of Redwood Materials, which recycles rechargeable batteries. The company has figured out how to extract materials like cobalt, nickel, and lithium, which otherwise are typically mined. To do so, the company has had to develop a variety of new industrial processes—again, one of the keys to reviving manufacturing here.
“Whether you’re building a new machine or trying a new process … acquiring a new technology is one of the most important ways a company can innovate,” Berger says. Although she acknowledges that “innovation is risky, and everything does not succeed,” she points out that “a single focus on optimization [in firms] has not served us well.”
Manufacturing success stories
The future of US manufacturing, then, can take many forms. But Berger, when she visits factories, is consistently struck by the vintage machines often on display. She tells the story of a manufacturer she visited within the last couple of years that not only uses milling machines made during World War II but buys them up when other firms in the field discard them.
“If you have all old equipment, your productivity is going to be low, your profits are going to be low, you’ll want low-skill workers, and you’re only going to be able to pay low wages,” she says. “And each one of those features reinforces the others. It’s like a dead-end trap.”