“I think I want to be a plumber because plumbing seems like a big puzzle,” says 17-year-old Ella, who I met at a National Manufacturing Day event sponsored by MSC Industrial Supply Co. in Knoxville, Tenn. Ella is a tiny, timid girl hiding behind glasses and blazing blue hair. It’s an ah-hah moment for me. “Oh, you like puzzles?” I respond....

The manufacturing employment gap has existed for years, but some manufacturers have built great work cultures and evolved with societal changes to successfully build talent pipelines. In some areas, local stakeholders have created education and workforce development (EWD) programs that utilize local manufacturers and specialty partners to feed...

“You can see their eyes light up when they learn about something new. Aha, it happened!” shares Vanina Ghossein, her own face beaming. Her enthusiasm for a new curriculum she has helped develop around composites for K-12 is palpable. “I love everything about it–from planning an activity, looking for materials, deciding how students should do it...

Health care innovators are working toward a future in which an ailing patient can receive a new bodily organ without having to wait for a human donor.

That’s one piece of the grand vision behind emerging work in biofabrication — which is the manufacture of living cells, tissues, and organs — and it’s part of a potential economic engine that...

“I just thought this was the coolest place. It looks like Tony Stark’s basement, so I said, ‘Let’s do this!’”

That was New Jersey native turned Michigan resident Staff Sgt. Cameron Homburg’s reaction to his first visit to LIFT, the Detroit-based Department of Defense national manufacturing innovation institute, as he considered what his civilian...