In 2024, Smart Manufacturing Will Walk Back Prior Plans

Among Fortune 500 manufacturers, 30% will dilute plans to bring manufacturing home. COVID-19, post-pandemic supply chain disruptions, container ships stuck in canals, and fractious geopolitics have combined in ways that make governments understandably nervous. And now they’re rushing to respond by identifying strategic industries (batteries, pharmaceuticals, etc.), offering cash and tax breaks, and generally cajoling manufacturers to “come home” and bring manufacturing jobs back from offshore locations they were sent to decades ago. Automation plays a big role in making manufacturing cost-effective in an expensive labor market, but just throwing robots at a poorly designed workflow is never going to end well. We’ve been buried under a mass of bullish headlines about new factories and big investments, and we’ve also seen some expensive embarrassment as overconfident early movers failed to get (individually great) machines, software, and people working together quite as well as they expected. A lot of those plans are now being reexamined with greater care: In 2024, expect some Fortune 500 manufacturers’ boldest promises to be quietly diluted.

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