Today's Manufacturing Pulse
Stellantis to pour $1.08B into next‑gen EV line at Mulhouse plant
President Emmanuel Macron announced Stellantis will invest more than €1 billion (about $1.08 billion) in a next‑generation electric‑vehicle production line at its Mulhouse facility, slated to start in 2029 as part of France’s push to electrify two‑thirds of new cars by 2030.
Also developing:
By the numbers: TIEA Connectors raises $8M Series A
Warehouse Power Infrastructure Is Redefining Leasing
In this episode, Kevin interviews Blake Chroman, Principal at Sitex Group, about how warehouse power infrastructure is becoming a decisive factor in industrial real estate leasing and development. Chroman explains that electrical capacity, utility connection timelines, and total occupancy costs now drive site selection, prompting developers to reposition older buildings and prioritize power readiness. He shares examples from Sitex’s portfolio in New Jersey, New York, and South Florida, illustrating how power considerations are moving from a background issue to a front‑line requirement for tenants.
Product Returns Jumped Twice as Fast as Purchases, Narvar Says
Narvar’s February 2026 report shows holiday return volume surged 11% year‑over‑year, nearly double the 6% rise in purchase orders. The spike coincides with a 12‑year low in consumer confidence, prompting shoppers to treat returns as a final budget filter. Retailers...
What a Year of Trump 2.0 Has Taught Us About the Global Economy
In his second term, President Donald Trump pushed average U.S. import tariffs to about 18%, the highest level since the Great Depression. The higher duties widened the trade deficit and contributed to persistent inflation, prompting the Federal Reserve to cut...
Crease, Fold, Transform. - Alfonso Parra Rubio - MIT
In this talk, Alfonso Parra Rubio examines how folding—mirroring natural processes—serves as a versatile engineering tool that reshapes materials without altering their intrinsic properties. He showcases examples ranging from millimeter‑scale cellular lattices to meter‑scale corrugated structures and robotic actuators, culminating...
Super-Modular Chiral Origami Metamaterials
In this talk, Tuo Zhao from Princeton presents his latest work on super-modular chiral origami metamaterials, which combine auxetic planar tessellations with Kresling‑style origami columns to achieve decoupled, large‑strain actuation. The assembly can twist up to 90°, contract in‑plane by...
Greener by Every Fold. Strength in Every Curve.
In this CDFAM symposium talk, Julia Hannu of STILFOLD presents the company’s origami‑inspired manufacturing process that folds metal sheets using both straight and curved creases to create structural parts. She explains how the digital design tools and algorithms they’ve built...
Conformal Lattice Design Made Easy: A CAD-Integrated Approach - Tetmet
In this symposium talk, Rachel Azulay of TETMET presents a CAD‑integrated workflow for creating conformal lattice structures at large scale. She explains how traditional lattice tools fall short for high‑performance, manufacturable designs and demonstrates how embedding lattice generation directly into...
Computational Design for Assembly: Automating Design Workflows for 3D Concrete Printed Staircases
The episode explores Scawo3D’s Selective Paste Intrusion (SPI) 3D concrete printing method for freeform reinforced concrete staircases and the computational workflow that makes it scalable. Presenters Philip Schneider and Timo Harboe Zollner explain how traditional formwork is labor‑intensive and how...
From Photo Film Maker To Biopharma Giant
Fujifilm Biotechnologies, a subsidiary of the historic photo‑film maker, opened a 150‑acre, commercial‑scale biopharma manufacturing campus in Holly Springs, North Carolina, investing over $3.2 billion. The first phase features eight 20,000‑liter mammalian cell‑culture bioreactors, with a second phase slated to double...
The US Is a Small Country
The article revisits the classic small‑country tariff model, contrasting it with the large‑country framework that allows an importer to affect world prices. It explains how a sufficiently small tariff could improve a large importer’s terms of trade, creating an "optimal...
The 2026 Material Handling Marketing Report: Why Thought Leadership Is King
In this episode, Kevin and Ashton Maxfield dissect the 2026 Material Handling Marketing Report, which reveals that 45% of industry professionals rank Thought Leadership and Content as their top marketing priority. They explain how traditional sales tactics—like spec sheets and...