Panasonic Corp plans to transfer most of its domestic appliance production in China back to Japan starting in the spring, a response to the weaker yen and a jump in labour costs in China. It is one of several Japan-based companies making such a move. Panasonic President Kazuhiro Tsuga said in an interview on Tuesday, […]

The UpTake: This startup’s robotic sewing technology could be the best hope for onshoring apparel manufacturing. A n Atlanta startup is using advanced manufacturing technologies to help bring apparel manufacturing back to the United States. SoftWear Automation Inc. has developed robotic sewing technologies to automate apparel manufacturing. Rather than develop custom hardware, SoftWear uses off-the-shelf […]

Matthew B. Elliott, Michigan State president, Global Commercial Banking, Bank of America Merrill Lynch What will be the biggest trend impacting the investments manufacturers make in 2015? Driven in part by a favorable financing environment in the U.S. for the manufacturing industry, we are expecting a continued increase in manufacturing companies reshoring their businesses. Now […]

The pace of re-shoring and near-shoring – whereby manufacturing operations are relocated back to the U.S. directly under the former or to nearby Mexico and Latin America countries via the latter – is slowing down, according to a new study by global consulting firm A.T. Kearney. As a result, freight imports through U.S. ports are […]