Batch of One: How AI & Robots Will Bring Manufacturing Home to the U.S.

Imagine custom shirts and shoes at mass production prices with same day delivery; imagine turbine parts produced at the airport where and when they are needed; imagine a new tooth made while you're in the dentist chair. The age of smart local manufacturing is just around the corner. Often called Industry 4.0, this new wave manufacturing incorporated connected devices (internet of things: IoT), cloud computing and machine learning. The term Industry 4.0 originated in 2011 with German government-funded research on advanced manufacturing. The second industrial revolution was mass production, starting around 1870, but best known for the assembly lines of Henry Ford 1913.