Manufacturing in the United States has gone through ebbs and flows over the years and emerging technology is now re-structuring our entire view on the future of the industry. Additive manufacturing (AM) is one of the main technologies that is changing the face of manufacturing. This technology is allowing businesses to manufacture customized products in smaller quantities, and thus providing customers with a more personalized experience. Many business leaders believe that this type of manufacturing will lead the industry in the not-too-distant future.

What do you think the manufacturing industry will look like in 10, 20 or 50 years?

Entrepreneur recently published and article, Re-Making Manufacturing in the United States, in which they interviewed business leaders in a variety of fields about the future of manufacturing and the impact of additive manufacturing. Below are three excerpts that we found very interesting…

“There are parts of the manufacturing process that will be competitive in the U.S. again, but I think it requires a redefinition of what we assume to be manufacturing. I don’t think that the kind of manufacturing we do here will be the really dirty manufacturing with the smokestacks,” said Jessica Banks, the founder of RockPaperRobot, a kinetic furniture business, headquartered in Brooklyn, N.Y. “It will be manufacturing based on a lot of prototyping, a lot of new manufacturing processes, and rapid prototyping processing. And it will really involve iteration.”

One of the reasons prototyping is becoming a more refined, sophisticated and immediate process is because of the development of 3-D printing technology.

New technologies, in addition to innovative ideas, have allowed for the increased sophistication in and acceleration of that first phase of the manufacturing process. For example, the advancement of 3-D printing technologies has allowed for constructions that were never before possible.

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