Manufacturing evolved in the United States through geographic clusters that produced competitive advantages in expertise, scale of operations, research prowess, and skilled labor. The origin of the automotive sector is an example of a regional cluster, with vehicles assembled in the Detroit area from parts and components manufactured in the upper...

The United States is the second largest market for apparel consumption in the world and is also the third-largest producer of cotton globally. But despite having demand and materials, the domestic textiles and apparel industry has been in steady decline for decades. The U.S. imported a total of $127.7 billion in textiles and apparel in 2019, and...

A team of University of Massachusetts (UMass) Lowell researchers has partnered with researchers from Saint-Gobain, a multinational manufacturer of construction and high-performance materials, to create new, cost-effective sensor-laden textiles that can be used to monitor the structural health and integrity of vital infrastructures across the...