Find information about manufacturing workforce and labor management best practices, including workforce compensation strategies; education and training; employee recruitment, engagement and retention; teamwork; and other labor relations and employment policies.
The average base salary breached $100,000 in the 2013 IndustryWeek Salary Survey, and pay raises were the norm, not the exception. This slideshow accompanies "Salaries Remain Upward Bound," IW's March 2013 article on manufacturing management salaries.
Many of the stories about manufacturing reshoring these days involve baby steps - a single operation moving back, the return of a product line, a gain of a few employees. Daniel Mahler thinks it's time for bolder thinking....More
Shaw Industries' remote worker policy is just one small piece of the company's more comprehensive recruiting effort. "What we are trying to do is fill positions with the right talent in order to meet business goals and objectives, and meet our customers' expectations. We want to be the organization of choice," -- and not just for the short term....More
Research says that workers who enjoy regular breaks -- including frequent vacations -- produce better results and stay with their employers longer. Shouldn't manufacturers enjoy the same benefits?...More
High end electric carmaker Fisker Automotive, which has had financial difficulties for months, said Friday it was laying off 75% of its workforce....More
The company said the cuts were 'due primarily to a reduction in demand for the locally made Cruze small car led by a high Australian dollar, combined with one of the most open and competitive car markets in the world.'...More
An eventful and choppy week for economic data as the U.S. economy continued to recover from the Great Recession in fits and starts. Concerns grew that budget tightening was creating a drag on the fragile economy and would likely cause the Federal Reserve to continue its monetary stimulus policy. There was little this week to support the idea of a manufacturing renaissance....More
Have I mentioned the 2013 IndustryWeek Best Plants Awards competition? It's IndustryWeek's annual salute to North American manufacturing excellence, and I am the coordinator of the competition....More
Workers at a French greetings card firm on Friday sequestered the head of their company and the chief of the Dutch firm which owns it after sacked employees were told they would not get their dues....More
Weaving analytics into workspaces from the shop floor to the c-suite enables personnel to set goals, spot problems and be proactive to identify new opportunities and risks....More
Dialogue introducing new forecasting study on what the economy might look like in 2025 with a manufacturing resurgence. Video from the Aspen Institute....More
Manufacturing makes America strong. It makes families and communities strong. It provides national security. It gives us energy security. And for the 12 million men and women who work in manufacturing, it gives us pride....More
Christopher Barnatt of ExplainingComputers.com demonstrates how Big Data is transforming the business and industrial worlds and enabling new technologies and new breakthroughs that will help manufacturers work more efficiently than ever before....More
Beyond an initial novelty, 3D Printing could have a game-changing impact on consumer culture, copyright and patent law, and even the very concept of scarcity on which our economy is based....More
Christopher Barnatt of ExplainingTheFuture.com illustrates the inner workings of additive manufacturing machines and provides some real-life examples of how 3-D printing technology could dramatically change the manufacturing and retail industries as we know them today....More
Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab break down the engineering and design challenges they faced during the Curiosity rover's complicated landing near the Martian equator on Aug. 5, 2012....More
Find information about manufacturing workforce and labor management best practices, including workforce compensation strategies; education and training; employee recruitment, engagement and retention; teamwork; and other labor relations and employment policies. 
