Nucor Says No, Kimberly-Clark Bets Big, Pricing Pressure Worsens: IndustryWeek's Weekly Review
Welcome to the first IndustryWeek's Weekly Reads for the month of November. Please enjoy the Top 10 most-consumed content over the past seven days and then peruse our full library of manufacturing insights.
Battery Manufacturer Bets Big on Brownfield Site in Buffalo, New York: Revitalizing an impoverished neighborhood was a business decision, not altruism, says the leadership at Viridi, a company making power storage systems for industrial applications.
Nucor Leaders Drop Northwest Rebar Mill Plan: The company’s board had allocated $860 million to the project nearly two years ago. ‘We’re going to use those dollars elsewhere to think about growth,’ CEO Leon Topalian told analysts.
US Manufacturing's Moonshot: the Urgent Call to Rebuild Our Industrial Might: From shipyards to space, America's eroding dominance in critical areas needs rebuilding with workforce training and pipelines and public-private partnerships.
Kimberly-Clark to Acquire Kenvue for $48.7 Billion, Creating Consumer Health Giant: “Bringing together Kenvue and Kimberly-Clark creates a uniquely positioned global leader in consumer health with a broader range of new growth opportunities ahead,” says Kenvue Chair Larry Merlo.
AI in Manufacturing: What's Now—and What's Next? The head of MIT's Computational Design and Fabrication Group shares emerging AI trends and looks at what is already possible.
What I Learned from Toyota’s Virtual Reality Safety Training in Kentucky: No motion sickness but a lot of virtual close calls at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky, the largest auto plant in North America.
Expect More Tariff-Driven Price Hikes Across Manufacturing: Distributor CEOs: MSC Industrial Supply and W.W. Grainger leaders say their suppliers are raising prices rapidly. MSC says pricing pressure is worse than the post-COVID period, likely locking in manufacturing supply inflation through 2026.
Eaton To Buy Boyd Thermal in Bid To Meet Growing Data Center Demand: “Our decades of expertise in liquid cooling, combined with Eaton’s premier positioning in intelligent power management, will deliver innovation in scaling and efficiency to address the high-power demand of AI data centers,” says Boyd Thermal Chief Executive Officer Doug Britt.
Jabil Joins the Data Center Manufacturing Gold Rush: So That Happened: IndustryWeek editors look into that story, why a functional power grid can be a bad thing, how manufacturing investments are shaking out, what's cool in automation and how Caterpillar is looking to recruit future workers.
Podcast: Leadership Characteristic 8: Empathy for Others: In this episode of Behind the Curtain: Adventures in Continuous Improvement, podcast hosts Dr. Mohamed Saleh and John Dyer continue their multi-episode discussion about 10 critical leadership characteristics for team-based improvement. The focus of this podcast: empathy.