Jeff Applegate and team have built Houston-based Texas Injection Molding into a regional industrial powerhouse, along the way co-founding the Greater Houston Manufacturers Association in 2013. Recently, Applegate steered TIM into an acquisition by Blackford Capital, where he now leads a rollup strategy to “build a platform of injection molding companies in high-growth regions and high-growth […]
Much has been reported recently on the state of the Department of Commerce’s NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership program, or MEP. The program has been around since 1988, enacted to help small- and medium-sized U.S. manufacturers improve competitiveness, in a nutshell. It’s a worthy goal that’s led the efforts of all 50 MEP centers – one per […]
To know Dan Allford is to understand that if one person could personify Houston manufacturing, it’s him. Not that he would agree; too modest from too many years in the patch, for one. But much like Houston, Allford and his company, ARC Specialties, is keeping one foot planted in the oilfield but the other in […]
Ashe Menon sold his company to NOV (formerly National Oilwell Varco) in 2006 after his firm proved its mettle using mobile devices to help increase uptime on drilling rigs. He stayed on and took a new role in 2015 when NOV and others faced the largest oil and gas downturn in decades. Menon was asked to […]
There’s excess production capacity in America’s industrial base. Yet finding capable local suppliers is an opportunity that continues to be overlooked US manufacturing is stuck in a negative feedback loop. Consider Ford CEO Jim Farley’s otherwise well-intentioned comments relating to his company’s workforce challenges. “We are in trouble in our country,” Farley recently said, […]
It’s no secret that across US industry, adoption rates of AI, and technology in general, differ. Consider service giant Amazon. Insiders now forecast the company to jettison 500,000 employees in the coming years because of AI, on top of tens of thousands already sent packing. Manufacturers have no such luxury – or inclination. People are […]
Doug Rhoda and team launched Vectis Automation at FABTECH in 2019, after deciding a year earlier the timing was probably right. “I walked FABTECH in 2018, asking myself, ‘is this (cobot welding) going to make sense or not?’” Six years later, with over 700 units now installed throughout North America, the answer is evident. But […]
Nubia Perez joined the family business full-time in 2012 and became CEO of Gretna Machine in 2023, a decade to ‘season’ and learn the ins-and-outs of operations. Right? Well, sort of. “During that time I wasn’t in a business development role, more behind the scenes,” says Perez. “For example, getting us into aerospace, leading the […]
Last month we reviewed Reshoring Initiative’s (RI) 2024 Annual Report that summarized announced plans by US companies to reshore manufacturing jobs. RI followed up the ‘24 Report with a 2025 survey of US manufacturers “to determine where U.S. manufacturers are with respect to reshoring and the key factors influencing those decisions.” Participation was high: over […]
Manufacturing’s workforce challenge is to get to the other side, to a promising future where graduates from the trade and higher education flash skills that match the workforce needs of a modern, high-tech industry. We’re not there yet, but the fruits of a decade of workforce advocacy, diminishing returns from university degrees, tech-industry malaise, a […]