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Officials said President Barack Obama will visit a western Pennsylvania steel plant after delivering this week's State of the Union address. A White House spokesman said Sunday that the president will travel to U.S. Steel's Irvin plant in West Mifflin on Wednesday to deliver remarks on the economy. The company said the Irvin plant produces sheet metal products from the steel slabs produced at the Edgar Thomson plant in Braddock. Obama will also be visiting the Washington suburbs of Prince George's County, Md. on Wednesday and will go to Milwaukee and Nashville on Thursday.

Boeing Co is hiring contract workers at its factory in South Carolina as it boosts output of the 787 Dreamliner and seeks to avoid manufacturing issues linked to the production increase, according to people familiar with the situation. Boeing confirmed on Wednesday that it is hiring at the facility but declined to provide details. The company was responding to a Wall Street Journal report that said the aircraft maker is adding about 300 contract mechanics and inspectors at its North Charleston facility. The Journal said the contractors were needed in part to avoid production issues with 787 body sections made...

One day a 3D printer, using a mix of materials, will be able to create body armor for U.S. soldiers that is more lightweight and stronger than anything could be made with traditional manufacturing and materials today. That's the word from researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who are working to revolutionize 3D printing, as well as the way that companies build products ranging from jet engines and satellites to football helmets. Scientists at the laboratory, a federally funded center in Livermore, Calif., that focuses on national security research, are working on architecting new materials to be used in...

Although the number of people who had jobs in the United States increased by 143,000 from November to December, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that still left 1,687,000 fewer Americans holding jobs than held jobs six years ago in December 2007—the month the last recession began. In November, 144,443,000 Americans were employed, said BLS. In December, 144,586,000 held jobs—representing a one-month increase of 143,000. In fact, the 144,586,000 Americans who had jobs this December was still 1,384,000 less than the 145,970,000 who held jobs seven years ago in December 2006. However, the 144,586,000 Americans who had jobs in...

A bit more good news for American manufacturing as Whirlpool announced it would move its commercial washing-machine production from Mexico to the United States. According to a press release, Whirlpool will shift production of its commercial front-load machines from Monterrey, Mexico to Clyde, Ohio. At 2.4 million square feet, the Clyde plant is the largest washing-machine factory in the world. Operations are due to begin in April, 2014. The Wall Street Journal first reported the story. Whirlpool said the relocation will make the company more efficient, since 90% of the commercial machines are sold in the U.S. (the rest are...

Thanks to the gun control blitzkrieg led by Democratic lawmakers last year, Colorado is about to take a hit in the wallet in the midst of an already anemic economy, and lose hundreds of private-sector jobs at a time when they can least afford it.

      Why factory jobs may be returning to America What 2014 could bring after years of losing manufacturing jobs to low-cost Asia by Tamsin McMahon on Thursday, January 2, 2014 5:00am - 11 Comments VIEW IN CLEAN READING MODE » WHAT IS THIS ?   Workers at the Motorola smartphone plant in Fort Worth, Texas. (LM Otero/AP) With its 1.5 million factory workers earning as little as $300 a month to make iPhones, laptops and PlayStations, the Chinese behemoth Foxconn has become a potent symbol of America’s manufacturing decline and the transfer of jobs to Asia.Which is why so many...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) -- One of the country's largest producers of ammunition magazines for guns is leaving Colorado and moving operations to Wyoming and Texas because of new state laws that include restrictions on how many cartridges a magazine can hold.

FORT EDWARD, New York — When General Electric moves jobs from its capacitor plant in this Hudson River town next year, worker Mark Rock figures he might have to leave, too. About 200 jobs will head south as soon as September when GE sends local operations to Florida to cut costs. While New York has had successes in the constant geographical tug of war for jobs, manufacturing jobs like these have been dwindling for decades. People in this area south of the Adirondack Mountains are the latest to wonder what comes next.

FORT EDWARD, New York — When General Electric moves jobs from its capacitor plant in this Hudson River town next year, worker Mark Rock figures he might have to leave, too. About 200 jobs will head south as soon as September when GE sends local operations to Florida to cut costs. While New York has had successes in the constant geographical tug of war for jobs, manufacturing jobs like these have been dwindling for decades. People in this area south of the Adirondack Mountains are the latest to wonder what comes next. "The high-paying jobs that we have now in...

One day, millions of car parts could be printed as quickly as newspapers and as easily as pushing a button on the office copy machine, saving months of development time and millions of dollars. 3D printing technology is making that day come sooner at Ford Motor Company. The development of the engine cover for the all-new Ford Mustang is the most recent example of the use of this technology. Ford uses 3D printing to quickly produce prototype parts, shaving months off the development time for individual components used in all of its vehicles, such as cylinder heads, intake manifolds and...

Beretta has eliminated Virginia from its short list of states to move its company because anti-gun Democrat Terry McAuliffe was elected governor. The firearms manufacturer made the decision to scratch Virginia off the list after the McAuliffe campaign fixated on restricting gun owners’ rights after receiving over $1 million in campaign donations from billionaire New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. “The anti-gun ads that McAuliffe ran in northern Virginia were particularly offensive,” Jeff Reh, general counsel of Beretta USA, told me in an interview. “And the fact that he could gain a voting advantage by doing so caused us additional...

The charts above are based on new data from the United Nations on GDP and its components for more than 200 countries, updated through 2012. Here are some highlights of the UN’s data update:1. The top chart compares the annual manufacturing output from 1970 to 2012 (measured in current US dollars) for the five countries that produced the most manufacturing output last year: China, US, Japan, Germany, and Korea.  As I reported last year, China officially became the world’s largest manufacturer in 2011, with output in 2011 ($2.34 trillion) that was 20.6% higher than the $1.94 trillion (updated) of...

A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS), led by Professor Loh Kian Ping, who heads the Department of Chemistry at the NUS Faculty of Science, has successfully developed an innovative one-step method to grow and transfer high-quality graphene on silicon and other stiff substrates, opening up opportunities for graphene to be used in high-value applications that are currently not technologically feasible. This breakthrough, inspired by how beetles and tree frogs keep their feet attached to submerged leaves, is the first published technique that accomplishes both the growth and transfer steps of graphene on a silicon wafer....

Following our recent Webinar event, Manufacturing Opportunities in the New Industrial Revolution, London-based speaker and author Peter Marsh took time to answer additional attendee questions submitted at time of registration, or during the event, which the speaker did not have time to respond to due to event time constraints and the speaker losing Internet connectivity. Questions and answers follow: 1. Do you feel India can eclipse China in the Indian continent’s ability to manufacturing/assemble electronics on a similar volume, thus displacing China’s capabilities as the destination for high-volume manufacturing? Right now China accounts for roughly 20 per cent of world...

If the Machinists union and Boeing could agree to a contract deal, Washington state would secure decades of work fabricating the 777X airliner’s advanced wing and assembling the jet here. Yet the union is divided and in turmoil over what the company calls its best and final offer. Two distinct, passionate arguments boiled up among the 31,000 local Machinists after their leaders Thursday rejected the revised offer. One vocal faction, including the local leadership, is dug in, unwilling to give up its hard-won gains from the past by making concessions on pay and benefits. Another group, including officials from the...

As you finish up your holiday shopping this year, you might be feeling the desire to buy American-made products. Any number of things claim to be made in the USA, but that label itself is not an absolute guarantee that what you’re buying was indeed produced stateside. While there are federal standards for what qualifies as “Made in America,” there is no vetting or certification process that goes on before that label can be applied. So a company could slap a made-in-USA sticker on its products and hope it doesn’t get caught, much like E.K. Ekcessories, an outdoor accessories company...

There is a boom coming from the private sector that looks to rewrite the American story for the next generation. It is possibly the life preserver this country needs as it attempts to correct itself from decades of expanding debts. These two forces together will upend the labor markets of the world. America is becoming a manufacturing and energy powerhouse once again due to this combination punch of robots and the unlocking of untapped resources. This story has been in the works for a while, but the technologies are now beginning to hit escape velocity. When we combine cheap and...

Researchers at Michigan Technological University (MTU) have developed a low-cost 3D printer capable of producing steel objects. Low-cost 3D printing, which creates objects layer by layer, has been restricted to polymers to create objects such as chess sets, toys, Christmas decorations and mobile phone covers. But the team led by MTU’s associate professor Joshua Pearce has cut the cost of making a 3D metal printer to around £900, compared with £300,000 for commercial metal printers. Better still, the detailed plans, software and firmware are all freely available and open source, so anyone can use them to make their own metal...

Within the last few minutes, local news is reporting that Aircraft Machinists Union 751 has offered a new proposal to Boeing, one would guess to try to convince Boeing not to move the manufacture of the 777-X out of state. I will post details if/when they become available.