MxD — in a new series of articles — scans the landscape of technologies and trends fueling manufacturing’s ongoing digital transformation: What’s here? What’s coming? And what’s the impact, including on the workforce? For this story we take a look at edge computing, featuring insights from Google Cloud’s Manufacturing Industry Manager Fabien...

“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 communities, according to Sherri McCleary, the Executive Director of the foundry.

A nose presser is a passerby who...

It’s a challenge for any company to efficiently invest in research and development (R&D) for advanced manufacturing applications. Costs are high and success is not a given. Joining industry peers in R&D to reduce risk also presents a dilemma: How do you help drive your company and the industry forward with technological innovation without...

“Remember Goldilocks—not too fast, not too slow, just right. You ready?” That’s Dr. Bob Voigt, a Materials Science and Engineering professor at Penn State University, coaching me on my first casting experience.

I’m wearing a reflective silver suit from head to toe, high-temperature gloves, and a face shield. Minutes before, I’d been scooping sand...

Today, manufacturing accounts for 25 percent of U.S. energy consumption and carbon emissions, and the industrial sector as a whole is the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the nation, at 30 percent. Changing how industry produces materials and products is...