3D printing, robotics, machine tools, new processes: making things faster, closer, differently.
Making things faster, closer, differently: the section follows 3D printing as it moves from prototypes to production parts, industrial and warehouse robotics, machine tools, and the processes that change a cost or a lead time by an order of magnitude. This is where real reshoring is decided — the kind that holds through productivity, not decree.
We report workshops and numbers: a cycle time, a cost per part, a defect rate, a production run starting. Asian and European machine builders — often mid-sized companies nobody covers — get the space their industrial weight deserves. The border with “Infrastructure” stays constant: here, what BUILDS; there, what is BUILT. Every article cites its sources.
The plant’s human-to-robot ratio is 2:1, compared with an average of 7:1 in the U.S. auto industry, although the basis for counting the 1,400 robots has not been fully clarified.
At Spartanburg, BMW says Figure 02 would have helped manufacture more than 30,000 BMW X3 vehicles in ten months.
The Uiwang exhibition covered intelligent automation, AI digital twins and enabling technologies.