“Nose presses” is not an official metric of workforce recruiting success for the Penn State Digital Foundry on 5th Avenue in New Kensington, PA, but it is hugely symbolic in the quest to expand the manufacturing talent pipeline in underserved communities, according to Sherri McCleary, the Executive Director of the foundry.

A nose presser is a...

The U.S. outspends other nations in r esearch and development and continues to lead the world in innovations and inventions. However, new products are often “stranded in the lab” when we don't have the manufacturing capability, or get developed in other countries such as China, Germany, and South Korea that invest more aggressively in...

The ARM (robotics institute) technology Project “Automated Defect Inspection for Complex Metallic Parts” has yielded impressive results, including detection rates above 95%, a speed of approximately one minute per part, and an expected 345% return on investment if deployed at one site. GKN Aerospace is adopting the technology, and has already built...

In the middle of the Monongahela (or “Mon”) Valley in Pennsylvania, innovation is underway for at least one manufacturing company. This is likely to be the case all around the region that surrounds Pittsburgh, which was once known as “Steel City” and is now being dubbed “Roboburgh.”

On one of the nearly 3,000 recent Manufacturing Day tours...