Skip to main content

The future of manufacturing: A look ahead to the next era of making things

The manufacturing industry is in an almost constant state of evolution. The way we make things — from cars to shoes to dental floss — has changed dramatically over the past 100 years, and the next 100 will surely be just as dramatic. So what big changes are on the horizon? What does the near future of manufacturing look like? To get a hint, we spoke with a Willem Sundblad, founder and CEO of Oden Technologies and all-around manufacturing expert. Here are three big things that he says we can expect to see in manufacturing in the coming years.

Rebuilding for resiliency

Over the past year, the manufacturing sector was rocked by a series of unexpected disruptions. The first (and most profound) was the coronavirus pandemic, which not only caused widespread factory shutdowns, but also led to a massive shift in people’s consumption patterns. This ultimately created shortages for a broad range of goods — everything from condoms to aluminum cans to computer chips. And that was just the beginning.

container ship stuck in Suez Canal
Xinhua/Wu Huiwo / Getty Images

“COVID was one thing,” says Sundblad, “but we’ve had other disruptions as well. The ripple effects of the Suez Canal blockage are still happening, for example. Then there were the winter storms in Texas earlier this year, which knocked out the whole petrochemical feedstock industry, which goes into everything that’s made out of plastic, which is a lot of stuff.”

Recommended Videos

Taken as a whole, these events have laid bare the fragility of global supply chains. We’ve now seen direct evidence of how a seemingly small and isolated incident can create a ripple effect that brings an entire industry to a grinding halt — and Sundblad suggests that the past year has made manufacturers acutely aware of that vulnerability. Over the next few years, he expects that many will make moves to restructure their operations so they can be more resilient in the face of disruption.

“What you really want to do,” says Sundblad “is foster a better ecosystem in the U.S., with closer links between customers and suppliers so that you can handle disruptions in a much better way and actually have an ecosystem that is closer to you so that you don’t have to ship everything from China.”

Weathering workforce shortages

As if volatile supply chains weren’t challenging enough, Sundblad also anticipates that the manufacturing sector will face increasing shortages in workers over the next few years. Why? To put it simply, more people are retiring from manufacturing jobs than are entering the field.

“This has actually been the discussion in manufacturing for years,” says Sundblad, “because you have an older workforce that is retiring with a lot of domain knowledge. Then on top of that, there’s just not enough young people who want to go into manufacturing.”

BMW factory worker using robotic arm
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Sundblad suggests the latter is less an issue of job availability than it is one of job attractiveness. There are plenty of manufacturing jobs out there, but working in a factory and making parts just isn’t as enticing as working for a trendy Silicon Valley software startup that has a ping-pong table in the break room and free kombucha on tap.

“If you want to attract young people into manufacturing,” Sundblad says, “you have to make it something that’s really compelling. And that means offering new digital tools, making really cool things that truly have an impact, and giving people a chance to see the the fruits of their labor. I think these are things that young people really want.”

Tech to the rescue?

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Despite the challenges that the manufacturing industry is currently facing (and will face in the coming years), Sundblad remains optimistic. With the right technology deployments, he thinks it’s entirely possible to alleviate some of the industry’s looming problems.

robotic arms in an automotive production line
Getty

“COVID was a massive catalyst of new technology being adopted in manufacturing,” he explains. “For example, augmented reality was a nice, shiny toy before COVID. It was one of those things that was nice to have, but not essential — so nobody actually used it. But then, when people suddenly couldn’t travel to factories and we had to minimize the amount of people that could work on factory floors, AR was a huge asset. With the right tech, operators on the factory floor could get real-time guidance from technicians, and actually solve problems faster.”

Sundblad says manufacturers are also rapidly adopting technologies like machine learning, A.I., and industrial IoT (Internet of Things) — and not just so they can replace factory workers, either. Instead, these systems are often meant to aid human laborers and make certain jobs easier to perform.

“These tools allow manufacturers to really analyze and optimize how they’re making their things,” he says. “If you do that, you can make things faster, you can make things more efficiently, and you can save both materials and energy. It’s a sustainability boost for everyone.”

So while technology certainly won’t solve all the world’s manufacturing woes, there’s good reason to believe it could help manufacturers become more stable, resilient, and efficient than ever before.

Drew Prindle
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Drew Prindle is an award-winning writer, editor, and storyteller who currently serves as Senior Features Editor for Digital…
Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan hit the brake on shipments to U.S. over tariffs
Range Rover Sport P400e

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced it will pause shipments of its UK-made cars to the United States this month, while it figures out how to respond to President Donald Trump's 25% tariff on imported cars.

"As we work to address the new trading terms with our business partners, we are taking some short-term actions, including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid- to longer-term plans," JLR said in a statement sent to various media.

Read more
DeepSeek readies the next AI disruption with self-improving models
DeepSeek AI chatbot running on an iPhone.

Barely a few months ago, Wall Street’s big bet on generative AI had a moment of reckoning when DeepSeek arrived on the scene. Despite its heavily censored nature, the open source DeepSeek proved that a frontier reasoning AI model doesn’t necessarily require billions of dollars and can be pulled off on modest resources.

It quickly found commercial adoption by giants such as Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo, while the likes of Microsoft, Alibaba, and Tencent quickly gave it a spot on their platforms. Now, the buzzy Chinese company’s next target is self-improving AI models that use a looping judge-reward approach to improve themselves.

Read more
Toyota shifts gears: 15 New EVs and a million cars by 2027
Front three quarter view of the 2023 Toyota bZ4X.

After years of cautiously navigating the electric vehicle (EV) market, Toyota is finally ramping up its commitment to fully electric vehicles.
The Japanese automaker, which has long relied on hybrids, is now planning to develop about 15 fully electric models by 2027, up from five currently. These models will include vehicles under the Toyota and Lexus brands, with production expected to reach 1 million units annually by that year, according to a report from Nikkei.
This strategy marks a significant shift for Toyota, which has thus far remained conservative in its approach to electric cars. The company sold just 140,000 EVs globally in 2024—representing less than 2% of its total global sales. Despite this, Toyota is aiming for a much larger presence in the EV market, targeting approximately 35% of its global production to be electric by the end of the decade.
The Nikkei report suggests the company plans to diversify its production footprint beyond Japan and China and expanding into the U.S., Thailand, and Argentina. This would help mitigate the impact of President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on all car imports, as well as reduce delivery times. Toyota is also building a battery plant in North Carolina.
For now, Toyota has only two fully electric vehicles on the U.S. market: The bZ4X  and the Lexus RZ models. The Japanese automaker is expected to introduce new models like the bZ5X and a potential electric version of the popular Tacoma pickup.
Separately, Toyota and Honda, along with South Korea’s Hyundai, all announced on April 4 that they would not be raising prices, at least over the next couple of months, following the imposition of U.S. tariffs. According to a separate Nikkei report, Toyota’s North American division has told its suppliers that it will absorb the extra costs of parts imported from Mexico and Canada. Another 25% for automotive parts imported to the U.S. is slated to come into effect on May 3.

Read more