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…
MANTEC: Strengthening South Central Pennsylvania Manufacturing Ask a production manager in South Central Pennsylvania how many of their operators are fully qualified to run a specific machine — not just able to do it with supervision, but genuinely certified and…
MANTEC: Strengthening South Central Pennsylvania Manufacturing There is a standard complaint from supervisors on manufacturing floors across Adams, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, and York counties that sounds something like this: "I showed them how to do it. I don't understand why…
MANTEC: Strengthening South Central Pennsylvania Manufacturing Every manufacturer has them—the recurring quality failures that everyone on the shop floor knows about, nobody can seem to permanently fix, and management has quietly accepted as a cost of doing business. The weld…
MANTEC: Strengthening South Central Pennsylvania Manufacturing U.S. manufacturing just posted its strongest expansion in nearly four years. The ISM Manufacturing PMI surged to 52.6 in January 2026, marking the first month of growth after twelve consecutive months of contraction—and new…
MANTEC: Strengthening South Central Pennsylvania Manufacturing Ask most manufacturers whether they track quality, and the answer is yes—through final inspection pass rates, customer complaint logs, maybe a monthly scrap report. Ask them what percentage of their parts make it through…