Intelligent Automation, Collaborative Robots Can Solve a Big Challenge

When the U.S. globalization push of the 1990s outsourced manufacturing, proponents could not have known the full impact this shift would have at home. Not only were many towns wiped out, their commerce to be replaced by service industries, but the manufacturing sector itself would struggle with the loss of infrastructure -- buildings and machinery -- and with manufacturing intelligence as well. Manufacturing intelligence, the kind of know-how and workers that we need to take back industries, was lost. The country's shrinking manufacturing base benefited many other global economies, however. China, of course, became a major trade partner.