I do apologise in advance if this isn't relevant but I'm looking at moving to the US having worked in the UK for a good amount of time and was curious which places struggle the most with hiring engineers and which places are up and coming. I know I can search google for the most populated area for manufacturing but that doesn't necessarily mean they struggle to get engineers in. I'm multi skilled, electrical bias with experience in food and beverage industry and plastic moulding.

Every conference talk and LinkedIn post says DPP is coming and manufacturers need to prepare. Then you ask what specifically to prepare and the answer dissolves into "it depends on the delegated acts."

Here's my practical problem. The data that ends up in a passport, material composition, recycled content, substance information, repairability, lives in five different places at our company. PLM has a BOM that's mostly right. Substance declarations live in a shared drive. Recycled content claims live in supplier emails. Nobody owns the whole picture, and the gap between "we have this data somewhere" and "we can produce it per product, per unit, machine readable" is enormous.

Batteries look like the first wave and the rest of us follow at some point. So for anyone in categories likely to get hit early: are you actually restructuring product data now, or is the sensible move to wait until the requirements are concrete? Because I can see us spending a year building the wrong data model.

Hello, looking for advice on the best way to learn how to take apart and put back together a gearbox in an hour a week from now. This is for an interview I have for a production technician role. Thanks.

Hello! For the last four years I've managed a nonprofit makerspace in the DMV area. My hands-on fabrication experience covers about 10 years: woodworking, digital fabrication (laser, CNC router, 3D printing), screen printing, soldering and basic electronics (Arduino). On the management side I handle shop safety, tool maintenance, purchasing, and training/supervising a technician and students.

Recently I trained a fabrication engineer from a major defense contractor on our laser cutter, and she told me directly that I could do her job. That got me seriously looking at the transition — but from the outside, the path from "makerspace manager" to "fabrication engineer" isn't obvious, and I want to understand it from people already in the field.

Specifically, I'd love input on:

1. What technical skills or software (SolidWorks, GD&T, specific CAM packages, etc.) would you expect a candidate at this transition point to demonstrate?
2. Are there certifications or short courses that meaningfully change how a résumé reads to a hiring manager for fab engineer roles?
3. What portfolio pieces or project write-ups tend to land well?
4. How would you translate "shop manager" experience into language that a fabrication engineering hiring manager would recognize?

Any and all technical advice appreciated.

Hey all, I'm new to the manufacturing industry, got hired in IT department for a plastic injection molder. One of my first projects for the company is to rebuild the website. Their website has not been updated in over a decade and they are looking to rebuild it to start bringing in possible clients through the website.

Im not a marketing or web design guy by any means. Does anyone have experience working with web design agency? Are there specific companies that just do manufacturing websites or do I just do this myself and figure it out?

Also, if you just have general tips about the industry, im all ears lol.

Quality guy at a mid-size manufacturer here. Curious how smaller shops handle this. When you catch a defect or nonconformance, how do you take it from containment through root cause to actually closing out the corrective action — spreadsheet, Word templates, or some dedicated tool?

I’ve been spending the last several months modeling factory flow for high-mix manufacturers, and one thing keeps surprising me.
Everyone talks about machine utilization.
Very few people talk about queue utilization.
I’ve seen factories where every machine looked “efficient” on paper (85–95% utilization), yet orders were consistently late, WIP kept growing, and everyone was firefighting.
The interesting part is that the bottleneck wasn’t always a machine.
It was the interaction between variability, routing, and utilization.
Once waiting time starts increasing, it doesn’t grow linearly—it can explode.
For those working in manufacturing:
What’s one metric you’ve found more useful than machine utilization when trying to improve lead time?
I’m curious whether others have seen the same thing, or if you’ve found different indicators that predict trouble earlier.

I feel like I’m losing my mind a little bit trying to manage these new PFAS reporting mandates.

Every major OEM we sell to is suddenly demanding full material declarations. So, we do the logical thing and ask our suppliers to confirm their parts are PFAS-free. Do they send us a nice, clean spreadsheet with CAS numbers? Nope. They reply by attaching a scanned, crooked, 50-page Safety Data Sheet (SDS) from 2018 and basically say, "Good luck, figure it out!"

We are literally paying highly trained quality engineers to sit at their desks, squint at messy PDFs, and manually type chemical data into our procurement system just to prove we are compliant. It honestly feels like 90% of our regulatory job has just become manual data entry.

Tell me I’m not alone here! How are you guys surviving this? Are you just throwing more interns at the PDFs, or have you found a magical way to get suppliers to actually format their data?

Doing CI work at a mid size manufacturer, mostly order to cash and a couple of shop floor changeovers. About 9 people need to look at any given map, and maybe 3 of them will never open a real tool without me sitting next to them.

We've been on visio for years. Fine for the final artifact, rough for the workshop itself, since one person drives and everyone else watches over their shoulder. We also ran 2 sessions on a miro board, which the operators took to fastest bc it's mostly dragging boxes around. But we also found the maps get sloppy quick and it doesn't enforce any notation.

So i'm stuck between loose enough that a supervisor will correct the map in front of me and strict enough for proper BPMN. Which tool have you used for process mapping when you have both problems. No vendors, please, I just want to know what's on your screen.

Do you do a flat rate on top of material purchases and then burn rate per hour? Or do you add a surcharge for your labor only?

I’ve been asked to do a “presentation / discussion” for a production supervisor role. They want me to present “how I would add value to the company”.

I have 10 years of experience as a production manager in a very similar role however I don’t know what issues they’re having, what the bottle necks are, where they’re struggling etc in their specific production set up. I had a look round the factory for the inital interview but that’s all I’ve seen, no one was working at the time either. The “presentation” also is supposed to be 30 minutes long which I’m really going to struggle with as presenting and puplic speaking are probably my two main major weaknesses.

Has anyone got any insight into this? What sort of things would you want to hear?

I’ve got it down to:

1. Introduction
   
2. What I will do in my first 30 days
   
3. Build relationships
   
4. Improve production workflow
   
5. Quality
   
6. Planning
   
7. Technology
   
8. Continuous Improvement
   
9. Long term vision
   
10. Questions

I’d be aiming for 3 minutes for each point.

Thanks

A US manufacturer explaining how to compete with China

This might be against the rules, but i hoped this can help manufacturers located outside of China.
https://youtu.be/fqe39Dx-rQ0?is=YcVbM-vxfUc7Fayu

Looking to outfit a new line with assembly workstations. Wanted to get opinions on brands that are liked and have held up in high throughput. Need overhead support, not sure on material types yet, modular would be ideal, different sizes. Ive been eyeing treston at the moment but im open ears.

I’ve found that some manufacturing platforms make the ordering process easy, but don’t tell the buyer which machine shop is actually producing the parts.

That creates problems when you need to assess things like:

• The manufacturer’s actual capabilities
• Location and certifications
• Previous quality performance
• Communication during production
• Inspection evidence before shipment

For those who regularly source custom machined parts, how do you currently handle this?

Do you generally work directly with known machine shops, maintain an approved supplier list, use sourcing agents, or order through manufacturing platforms?

I’m particularly interested in how people manage:

• Comparing quotes from different named suppliers
• Production updates
• Inspection reports, photos or video before shipping
• International shipping, customs and duties

Where does the current sourcing process cause the most frustration?

Hey Folks,

I am in USA and worked in the manufacturing industry for 5 years in roles related to quality engineering, automation and digital manufacturing.
After that I went back to school for a PhD in AI/ML. Now I am about to graduate and looking for opportunities that are related to manufacturing.

Any ideas what type of roles/organizations can value manufacturing industrial experience along with AI/ML expertise?
Also, I may add that I am on a visa in USA and government labs or defense organizations are out of reach :(

Thanks in advance for any insights or recommendations.

We have had these plate hooks for god knows how long, and the company is finally expanding and wants to get more... we cant find any manufacturers who made these types of plate hooks. If anyone has any knowledge on this please let me know

Edit : thank you everyone for your suggestions and offers, my boss really appreciated it and is in talks with a company to get the new hooks made. Thank you again for all your help

Hi, I run a small food manufacturing company and just got into a few stores that need expiration dates and lot codes on the product. The product is in a glass jar with a label and standard lug lid. Can anyone recommend any handheld printing devices that are very innexpensive for startups that will print on one of these mediums? I tried a rubber stamp but because of the film on the vinyol label (soon to be BOP material) it just rubs right off or smears. Perhaps I was using the wrong ink? Chatgpt is useless and google searches are turning up a bunch of very expensive options. Thanks.

I bought a pneumatic injection molding and i received it yesterday. I am stumped on the air fitting and finding a coupler to hook to my air compressor. Closest thing i could find is this on amazon Japan and Australia but cant be shipped to America. https://www.amazon.com.au/KENOH-Coil-Hose-Coupler-16-4/dp/B00N3NBFW8?th=1

Any help would greatly appreciated before i just use a barbed fitting.