Podcast: Events that reshaped manufacturing over the past 25 years

Key takeaways

• Globalization’s decline and reshoring efforts are reshaping U.S. manufacturing strategies and policies.
• Supply chain crises highlight the need for agile, resilient strategies to manage global disruptions.
• EtherCAT enabled precise plant-wide automation, laying the foundation for Industry 4.0.
• Shale gas, space innovation, and union activity are redefining costs, opportunities, and workforce dynamics.

We're a quarter of the way into this century, and a lot has happened. When we think about today's connected factories, in many cases controlled by tablets and smartphones, we should remember that virtually none of that was possible as recently as the turn of the century.

Throughout the past few weeks, editors at IndustryWeek have been publishing game changers stories, a look into the 25 events that have reshaped the manufacturing landscape. From terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, to the 2008 economic collapse to COVID-19, it's been an eventful century so far.

In this podcast, the IndustryWeek editors talk about what they learned from the giant look back: which game changing events took them by surprise, and which ones did they enjoy learning more about?

Below is an excerpt from the podcast:

Robert Schoenberger: Hello and welcome to Great Question, a Manufacturing Podcast. I am Robert Schoenberger, editor-in-chief of IndustryWeek. And today we are talking about our recent 25 in 25 series, our Game Changers—our look at the biggest things that affected the manufacturing world in the first 25 years of the 2000s.

It was an interesting list to put together. We discussed it internally to develop a general list. Then we worked with a bunch of outside experts and contributors, got their opinions, and did our best to really get a wide range of perspectives on what were the major events of the past 25 years.

A few are obvious. We can't ignore COVID. We can't ignore the economic collapse of 2008–2009. But beyond that, there were a lot of interesting and surprising elements that our editors discovered as we went through this process.

So today I just wanted to discuss a little bit about what we found and why we found them so interesting. And I'm going to start with Laura Putre, who is a senior editor at Industry Week. In addition to researching several items on the list, she really guided us through this. She worked with a bunch of the outside experts to determine who should be on here and what sorts of topics we should be discussing.

So if we could—Laura, briefly, could you tell us a little bit about how we put the list together? Then we can talk a little about what surprised you as we worked through it.

Laura Putre: We started this project maybe around the end of 2024, just discussing what events were significant. So we got together as an editorial staff, and everybody came up with their own unique list of events that had changed manufacturing in the past 25 years. We went through a discussion process, kind of narrowed down the list, and then reached out to our contributors as well to see what their game changers were, and we made some changes around their suggestions.

Robert Schoenberger: So we each chose about five to research and write up. Of the ones you researched, which one did you find the most interesting?

Laura Putre: I guess what I found interesting was, as a whole, looking at the path of globalization and free trade, and then the shift to more focus on bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. Within the past 25 years, there were stirrings of concern—like, are we not manufacturing the things here that we need to be manufacturing? Even after 9/11, that early, there was talk about bringing manufacturing back.

Then the Great Recession hit. We talked about losing some of the manufacturing because credit was tight, and some of these small, very skilled shops with thin profit margins didn't survive. A lot of that manufacturing went overseas. That kind of fed into the tariff discussion as well. And then, of course, when Trump ran on a free trade platform and we had the first round of tariffs that were continued under Biden—and here we are today.

Robert Schoenberger: And it's really interesting to think about: we have spent so long—really the modern world order that the manufacturing world has built itself around, going back to NAFTA, so going back to the early ’90s—has been the sense of increased globalization, increased trade. And the first Trump presidency and now definitely the second one have really upended that in so many interesting ways. So it has been, as we call this, the Game Changer series—that really has been a massive change to how we look at manufacturing's role in the economy. So did you find any surprises when you were looking through the list?

Laura Putre: Yeah, I wanted to just mention the Great Recession and talk about how many of our items just came out of the Great Recession or led into things—like the auto bailout of GM and Chrysler, and Ford kind of not predicting, but maybe anticipating the economic crisis ahead. I didn't know the whole history of how Elon Musk had acquired the GM-Toyota plant in California. It sounds like he was at the right place at the right time. Toyota was looking to unload this plant after GM had exited the partnership with its bankruptcy problems.

And Toyota's president actually took a liking to Elon Musk, and Elon was still making cars basically in a garage. Akio Toyoda came and took a Tesla for a test drive and, you know, liked the car. He liked talking to Elon Musk, and he gave him a great deal on the plant. That really got Tesla rolling with its mass production.

Robert Schoenberger: Yeah, it's a fascinating case. And it all comes out of the Great Recession. GM needed to cut its footprint and it decided to cancel a plant that was at partial capacity and turn it over to its partner.

Toyota has never closed a manufacturing plant, especially not in North America. So it allowed them to avoid a situation where they didn't have the demand to fill an entire plant with their product. They got a nice benefit out of that as well by not having to actually go through the process of laying off workers for the first time in North America. So it was just an interesting case that all spun out of that near economic collapse that we ran through in that very short time frame.

Anna Smith, who is our news editor and covers workforce issues for us here at Industry Week. Anna, can you talk a little about what you found most interesting when you were researching items on this list?

Anna Smith: So for the most interesting—I have been covering the supply chain for the last few years, but I would say the most interesting entry that I wrote was about the supply chain crises that have happened in the past five years or so. Even though I'd been covering the supply chain and kind of the isolated events that have been changing it, it was really interesting to see how it all came together.

I noticed, especially when looking at supply chain issues over the last few years, that a lot of issues have been especially prominent in maritime transportation. So I wrote about the Baltimore Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, drought conditions in the Panama Canal causing backlogs of ships and companies needing to offload cargo, and how that impacted transportation times. Also, vessel attacks in the Red Sea—where, to avoid going through that area, ships were adding weeks to their transportation times to go around the southern tip of Africa.

Once I really put everything together, it stood out to me how much the supply chain really has changed in the last few years, and how there really isn't going back to the way things were before. Companies really need to have strategies to stay on their toes to respond to crises—especially with extreme weather events because of climate change and the growing dependence on global trade. I thought it was interesting to look at it as a whole instead of just specific events, to see how much supply chain strategies have really become a huge part of manufacturing in the last few years.

Robert Schoenberger: And again, what we were talking about earlier—how prevalent global trade has been, yet how fragile it's been the entire time. There have been numerous cases of things like earthquakes or tsunamis or one-off events that have disrupted that global supply chain. But it didn't really seem until COVID that the damage was so extensive and so severe that it really got companies to completely rethink those strategies for the first time in a very long time.

So, other than interesting, what about surprising? Anything you learned that you weren't expecting when you started going into that list?

Anna Smith: Yes. I wrote about the introduction of the iPod in 2001 by Apple. And that was—first of all, it was interesting to me that it was selected to be on the list. I was a kid in 2001, so I guess I never really thought about how much this first iPod disrupted the consumer technology space. It was Apple's first step into really dominating the electronics and smartphone market.

Thinking about how far iPods and smartphones have come in the last two decades—it was interesting to go back and see how this little iPod that could only hold around 1,000 songs was something so new and exciting at the time. It also changed the way the regular consumer interacted with technology and was one of those first steps toward the rapidly increasing digital world that we all live in today.

Robert Schoenberger: We're recording this as a podcast—something that wouldn't have existed pre-iPod. The impact is so far-reaching, especially for a company that at the time was heading in a really bad direction. This industrial giant that we think of today as Apple came so close to not existing until it came up with these consumer electronics products.

Dennis Scimeca is our senior technology editor here at IndustryWeek. Dennis took a look at a lot of the technology changes over the past 25 years. Which one did you find most interesting when you were going through this list?

Dennis Scimeca: You know, the one that I found most interesting is probably the one that's most banal: development of EtherCAT, Ethernet for Control Automation Technology. I'm a geek. I've got Ethernet cables all around my house. It's known for being efficient and dependable. EtherCAT is an industrial-specific—it's not even an adaptation, it's a protocol.

Like how boring, right? A protocol. It's just a set of rules that dictate how data is transferred or translated. That's all it is. It's software. But EtherCAT tremendously changed manufacturing. It allows plant managers to tie all of their automation equipment together, to centralize the control of equipment, and to do it with extreme precision. So when you're running a production line, you can control a machine down to the microsecond, all the way across your plant. It's what made Industry 4.0 possible.

Without EtherCAT, we wouldn't be talking about IIoT and all these other connected systems. It created the technical backbone for everything that followed.

Robert Schoenberger: And it's fascinating because, like you said, it seems so banal. But it really is one of those under-the-hood things that nobody notices until it doesn't work. It makes all of these other innovations possible, but you have to get the plumbing right before the rest of it works. So how about surprises? What did you find that you weren't expecting when you were researching this list?

Dennis Scimeca: The shale gas boom. I knew about fracking, obviously. I knew about the controversies. But I didn't realize how much it changed U.S. manufacturing, especially chemicals, plastics, and metals. It massively reduced energy costs and feedstock costs. That gave U.S. manufacturers a sudden competitive advantage after decades of losing ground to low-cost countries. Companies started building new plants in the U.S. because energy was suddenly cheap again. That was a big deal.

Robert Schoenberger: Yeah, it really was. It was one of those cases where an energy innovation ended up being an industrial innovation as well. Now let's move on to Jill Jusko, our managing editor at IndustryWeek. Jill, what stood out to you?

Jill Jusko: So one that I thought was most interesting was private industry in space. You know, it used to be just NASA. Then you had SpaceX and Blue Origin come in. That really accelerated development and commercialization of space technology.

And there's such a manufacturing angle here. The amount of precision manufacturing, the amount of advanced materials, the amount of innovation that goes into rockets and satellites—it’s just tremendous. And it also created new markets for manufacturers down the supply chain who are supplying components.

Robert Schoenberger: And space has always been a driver of innovation. It’s interesting now to see it move beyond being purely government-driven. So how about surprises, Jill?

Jill Jusko: Honestly, it was unions. For years, we had been reporting on the decline of unions. Membership was going down, influence was going down. But in the last few years, you've seen a resurgence, especially with UAW at the Big Three automakers, and other sectors organizing.

What surprised me was the confidence and energy behind it. Workers were saying, “This is our moment. That bolt is mine. I put it in. I deserve more of the value being created here.” It really felt different than the union stories we had written for the previous 20 years.

Robert Schoenberger: Yeah, that sense of empowerment has definitely changed the dynamic. Thanks, Jill. Now let's move on to Ryan Secard, our staff writer, who looked at a lot of the emerging technologies. Ryan, what did you find most interesting?

Ryan Secard: For me, it was AI and machine learning. We've talked about automation for decades, but AI is a different leap. It’s not just machines doing repetitive tasks—it’s machines learning, predicting, optimizing. When I talked to manufacturers, they said this is where they see the next wave of efficiency gains coming from. Predictive maintenance, quality control, even design work. It’s still early, but the potential is huge.

Robert Schoenberger: And your surprise?

Ryan Secard: Honestly, 3D printing. I had always thought of it as kind of gimmicky—making toys or prototypes. But it has become a serious manufacturing tool, especially in aerospace and medical. Being able to print custom implants or lightweight parts for planes—that’s a real game changer. And it’s moving faster than I expected.

Robert Schoenberger: Yeah, it has really gone from niche to mainstream much more quickly than a lot of us thought. So thank you, Ryan. And thank you to all of the editors for sharing your thoughts on the 25 in 25 Game Changers. We’ll continue to cover how these shifts shape manufacturing in the years ahead.