MANTEC: Strengthening South Central Pennsylvania Manufacturing The numbers tell an uncomfortable story heading into summer. U.S. manufacturing labor productivity rose 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2026, a respectable quarterly bounce — but step back and the longer trend…
MANTEC: Strengthening South Central Pennsylvania Manufacturing Ask manufacturers what keeps them up at night and the answers usually run to tariffs, input costs, and hiring. But ask what they're actually trying to fix inside their own four walls, and a…
MANTEC: Strengthening South Central Pennsylvania Manufacturing Manufacturers headed into the second half of 2026 are doing so in a strange split-screen. Optimism is up — sentiment in the National Association of Manufacturers' Q1 2026 Outlook Survey climbed back above its…
MANTEC: Strengthening South Central Pennsylvania Manufacturing The pressure to automate has never been higher, but the cost of automating wrong has never been steeper. North American manufacturers ordered 36,766 robots worth roughly $2.25 billion across 2025, a 6.6 percent unit…
MANTEC: Strengthening South Central Pennsylvania Manufacturing Robot orders are accelerating across North America, and the buying frenzy is no longer limited to automotive giants. According to the Association for Advancing Automation, food and consumer goods orders alone jumped 105 percent…
MANTEC: Strengthening South Central Pennsylvania Manufacturing Manufacturers are spending billions on automation, but a startling share of those investments underperform. North American companies ordered $2.25 billion worth of robots in 2025 alone. Yet survey after survey reveals the same uncomfortable…
Pennsylvania manufacturing safety performance is lagging the national trend, and the gap is showing up on production schedules across the Commonwealth. According to the BLS Mid-Atlantic Information Office, Pennsylvania manufacturing recorded a Total Recordable Case rate of 3.3 cases per…
A worker steps back to avoid a forklift. The pallet next to him shifts but doesn’t fall. Two minutes later, a guard pops loose before someone notices. None of these events makes it onto an OSHA 300 log, and that’s…
At the National Safety Council Congress in September, OSHA released its preliminary fiscal year 2025 list of most-cited standards. Manufacturing leaders saw a familiar pattern. Lockout tagout sat at number four with 2,177 citations. Powered industrial trucks placed eighth with…
MANTEC: Strengthening South Central Pennsylvania Manufacturing Every manufacturer in South Central Pennsylvania has a version of the same story. A veteran operator retires after twenty-five years, taking with them the precise feed rate that prevents chatter on the lathe, the…