Automation for Manufacturing: A US Buyer’s Guide for 2026 The US manufacturing automation market in 2026 is a $30+ billion annual spend category fragmented across hundreds of vendors. For a US plant manager evaluating where to invest, the difficulty is not...
Manufacturing Automation for US Plants: 2026 Strategy Guide Manufacturing automation in 2026 means something different than it meant in 2006. Twenty years ago, automation was primarily about hardware: industrial robots, PLCs, conveyor systems, automated storage. In...
Manufacturing AI in 2026: A Practical Guide for US Plant Managers If you are a US plant manager, you have been pitched AI solutions dozens of times in the last three years. Every industrial software vendor has rebranded some portion of their product as AI-powered;...
Production Scheduling Software for US Manufacturing: 2026 Selection Guide Production scheduling is where the rubber meets the road in manufacturing. ERP generates high-level production requirements; the production scheduling system translates those requirements into...
ERP for Manufacturing: What US Plant Managers Need to Know in 2026 Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is the transactional spine of any US manufacturing operation. It manages orders from customers, procurement from suppliers, financial accounting, HR, and —...
Manufacturing Execution System (MES) Software: The 2026 US Buyer’s Guide Manufacturing Execution System (MES) software is one of the highest-stakes software decisions a US manufacturing company makes. Enterprise MES deployments typically run 18 to 36 months,...
The Principles of Lean Manufacturing and How to Deploy Them in a US Plant Lean Manufacturing is defined by five principles, first articulated by James Womack and Daniel Jones in their 1996 book Lean Thinking: Value, Value Stream, Flow, Pull, and Perfection. Thirty...
5S Methodology in Lean Manufacturing: The US Plant Floor Playbook 5S is the single most-deployed Lean tool in US manufacturing, and also the single most-abandoned. The initial launch is easy: a weekend event, operators labeling tool boards, red-tagging unused items,...
Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma: The 2026 Guide for US Plant Managers Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma have been the dominant operational improvement frameworks in US manufacturing for three decades. The Toyota Production System that gave birth to Lean in the 1950s;...
MMTS 2026: Why Quebec Aerospace, Food and Automotive Manufacturers Need Lightweight OEE Quebec’s manufacturing economy accounts for roughly one-quarter of the province’s GDP and employs close to half a million people across the region. Three sectors...
