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1 week ago | 
industryweek.com | Geert De Lombaerde |Jill Jusko |Laura Putre |Ryan Secard
Our dad always came home exhausted from his work supervising a power plant 50 miles away. But he still had time to do our chemistry homework for us (just kidding—he was there to help), fix the alternator on the car, groom the dog and take us camping. He could even sew (and make crepes)! And when we had a cold, he’d put a little whiskey in our tea so that when we came of age, we could impress our friends by downing a shot of Wild Turkey with a relaxed smile.
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3 weeks ago | 
industryweek.com | Jennifer Ramsay |Jill Jusko |Geert De Lombaerde |Laura Putre
In 2023, I wrote a story that featured custom fabrication company Morgan Li. Earlier that year, the company suffered a devastating blow when its 230,000 square-foot finished-goods warehouse, one of its five domestic facilities, was destroyed by a massive fire. The third-generation family business made plans to build a new facility in the same Chicago Heights neighborhood where it lost its warehouse space.
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1 month ago | 
industryweek.com | Laura Putre
General Motors on Tuesday announced it would invest $888 million in its Tonawanda Propulsion Plant in New York State, a welcome decision for both the United Autoworkers union and the governor of New York. The investment would go toward machinery, tooling and renovations at the plant to build the automaker’s new sixth-generation V-8 engines for full-size trucks and SUVS. Production of fifth-generation engines would continue during construction, which is expected to wrap up in 2027.
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1 month ago | 
industryweek.com | Geert De Lombaerde |Laura Putre |Dennis Scimeca |Anna Smith
Things Could Get Chippy at 3M Since taking over at 3M Co. a year ago, Chairman and CEO Bill Brown has preached about the need to regenerate the company’s organic growth engine, including by launching new products at the rate the conglomerate used to. At the recent Bank of America Industrials, Transportation & Airlines Key Leaders Conference, Brown spoke of another opportunity to goose 3M’s top line.
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2 months ago | 
industryweek.com | Jill Jusko |Geert De Lombaerde |Anna Smith |Laura Putre
Editor’s note: Welcome to So That Happened, our editors’ takes on things going on in the manufacturing world that deserve some extra attention. This will appear regularly in the Member’s Only section of the site. Guess who is celebrating a centennial in 2025? It's Caterpillar Inc., which officially turns 100 on April 15.
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Mar 25, 2025 | 
industryweek.com | Laura Putre
That’s why we’ve ended up growing in Mexico, to about 850 employees. We have a facility in Norcross, Georgia, and a facility in Houston, Texas, that do what we call “dailies”—the stuff that the uniform industry orders today and they need on their doorstep tomorrow. If an order comes into Norcross or Houston for name tags and company items by three o’clock in the afternoon, we ship same day.
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Mar 25, 2025 | 
industryweek.com | Laura Putre
As senior editor, Laura Putre works with IndustryWeek's editorial contributors and reports on leadership and the automotive industry as they relate to manufacturing. She joined IndustryWeek in 2015 as a staff writer covering workforce issues. Prior to IndustryWeek, Laura reported on the healthcare industry and covered local news. She was the editor of the Chicago Journal and a staff writer for Cleveland Scene. Her national bylines include The Guardian, Slate, Pacific-Standard and The Root.
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Mar 12, 2025 | 
industryweek.com | Laura Putre
Anna Dibble can testify to the staying power of manufacturing careers. The operations leader of Cummins Inc.’s engine business unit, Dibble has spent 33 years with the global engine and power systems company. She started at the Jamestown, New York, plant when she was 19, a summer hire on break from Pennsylvania State University. “I grew up in Jamestown, and I happened to walk in,” she recalls.
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Mar 5, 2025 | 
industryweek.com | Laura Putre
On March 4, President Donald Trump dropped the hammer and imposed promised tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico and China. Both Wall Street and the U.S. auto industry immediately went into panic mode. The stock market tanked and auto executives did some frustrating math as they tried to figure out how to keep the ship aright (let alone profitable) with 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico and an additional 10% on China.
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Feb 27, 2025 | 
industryweek.com | Laura Putre
Disgruntlement and dismay on tariffs lit up the comments section, with 86 thumbs-down tariff-related comments, and only five high-fives:“The key to great manufacturing is the ability to plan investments, supply chains and employment. The current chaos around tariffs and education for workforce training makes planning impossible.”—Respondent in the machining industry, “somewhat negative” on Trump.
