Improvements in manufacturing management software, robotics, additive manufacturing and thermal controls are making small batch sizes more cost effective—even for smaller shops. Manufacturing plants are able to reduce inventory, improve throughput and reduce demands on human operators.

After three years of work, military researchers are near the end of a project to find a faster, cheaper way to make tools for large aerospace parts like skins for wings and fuselages.

In January, as the new coronavirus was rapidly spreading around the world, scientists at Moderna teamed up with the National Institutes of Health to pursue a potential vaccine based on an experimental genetic technology involving messenger RNA (mRNA), a molecule in every cell that helps translate DNA into biological functions.

To a discrete manufacturer, process manufacturing is odd territory indeed. It’s a world in which textiles, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, plastics, and food and beverage are produced en masse.

CEO Jason Walker and part of his team at Waypoint Robotics had just returned from the Modex 2020 show in Atlanta when the governor of his company’s home state imposed a stay-at-home order because of COVID-19.