IEN Radio

The owner, identified as Li Xiaoshuang, parked his SU7 outside of a store, and what happened next was captured on a surveillance camera: while Li and another person conducted some business in the store, the blue vehicle began to drive away. Aware within moments, Li rushed outside to chase down the vehicle, which was reportedly stopped before any damage was done to people or surroundings.

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has restarted manufacturing and is working with suppliers to keep them in business as the U.K. automaker works to recover from a cyberattack that crippled production for more than a month. The company announced that its phased manufacturing restart will begin Wednesday, when a pair of plants in the West Midlands — the Electric Propulsion Manufacturing Center, where JLR buil...

Another day, another update on fledgling electric carmaker, Faraday Future. Recent reports point to an incident in a satellite building to the company’s Los Angeles headquarters, in which a vehicle prototype allegedly caught fire. https://www.ien.com/safety/video/22951814/ev-prototype-explodes-damages-company-hq

A federal grand jury charged two Colorado companies and some of their executives with conspiring to avoid paying tariffs on forklifts imported from China into the U.S.  Court documents accused the companies, Octane Forklifts, Inc. and Endless Sales, Inc., which does business as Discount Forklifts, of selling the machines to federal government agencies as “Made in America,” disguising their Chinese...

A manufacturer of agricultural equipment is citing tariffs in its decisions about its operations in the U.S. But rather than expanding its U.S. production, it will instead shift some work overseas.

A former production operator and production technician filed a lawsuit against electric vehicle battery maker BlueOval SK, a joint venture created by Ford and Korean manufacturer SK On. The lead plaintiffs, Sean O’Brien and Randall Moore, allege that the company violated the Fair Labor Standards Act and Kentucky Wage and Hour Laws, Western Kentucky University Public Radio reported .

Sandro Dias is a 50-year-old Brazilian skateboarding legend; he's a six-time vert world champion. Well, he recently made history once again when he dropped in from the curved facade of a 22-story building in Brazil.  Until now, the Centro Administrativo Fernando Ferrari (CAFF) building in Porto Alegre, standing 88.91 meters high, has been a white whale in the skateboarding community, which ha...

For this episode, I welcome Marco Ristano, a 28-year-old senior industrial engineering and planning specialist at machinery manufacturer Caracol . Ristano joined Caracol after a contact in the investment sector recommended the company. After nearly four years with the company, his duties include collecting and analyzing data, interaction with a range of teams, troubleshooting analysis and digitali...

Last Thursday, a former employee of a multinational DVD and Blu-ray manufacturer and distributor was sentenced to 57 months in prison, nearly five years, for stealing DVDs and Blu-rays of "blockbuster movies" and selling them before their release dates.  According to the Justice Department, 38-year-old Steven R. Hale of Memphis, Tennessee, worked for the DVD manufacturer. From February 2...

Boeing Defense and the machinists union have reached a tentative deal, ending a five-week-long strike in St. Louis. An official vote on the new five-year contract is scheduled for Friday, September 12.

Neenah Foundry, a maker of manhole covers and other iron castings, announced that it plans to close its plant in Lincoln, Nebraska, by the end of the year. Nebraska Public Media reported that the company intends to reopen the closed manufacturing facility as a distribution center on January 1, 2026.  Neenah Foundry notified the state labor departmen t that 103 workers would lose their jobs as a re...

A fire at a Pennsylvania plant owned by hardwood lumber producer Weaber broke out on the night of September 8, reportedly requiring more than 1 million gallons of water to contain. Fox43 reported that firefighters arrived at the 84-year-old company’s headquarters in Lebanon around 9:10 p.m. The station later noted that all first responders had left the scene by 8:45 a.m. the following morning, wit...

Serta Simmons is saying goodnight to a 122,000-square-foot factory in Jamestown, New York – a move the company says will take place in the next few months and impact 84 employees. According to Furniture Today , the plant closure is the second one that’s been initiated by Serta Simmons so far this year. The company announced in May that it would shutter a Moreno Valley, California plant that employ...

Last Tuesday, Tyson Foods announced that Brady Stewart, group president of prepared foods, beef and pork and the company's chief supply chain officer, was leaving the food company immediately. Stewart took "certain actions" that violated the company's code of conduct, the company said in a statement, though it didn't provide further details. 

Last month, more than 3,200 union workers at three Boeing plants in the St. Louis area went on strike. The employees, who make U.S. fighter jets and advanced weapons systems, rejected a "landmark" contract.  The deal reportedly gave workers a 40% bump over the next four years as well as better medical benefits, pensions, overtime and work-life balance. But the union's members reject...

This week, Ontario premier Doug Ford responded angrily to reports that the spirits company would be closing the Amherstburg Crown Royal bottling plant, killing 180 jobs in the process. Ford recently declared that he had a message “to [the company’s] CEO in France: You hurt my people, I’m going to hurt you” adding that Diageo leaders were “dumb as a bag of hammers.”

Jaguar Land Rover announced Tuesday that the company has been targeted by a cyberattack that has "severely disrupted" its production activities.  The British carmaker, which officially rebranded as JLR about two years ago, said it "took immediate action to mitigate its impact by proactively shutting down" its systems. The company says it is trying to restart its global applicat...

John Deere announced its acquisition of autonomous orchard sprayer GUSS Automation. Founded in 2018 and standing for Global Unmanned Spray System, GUSS expects its machines to act as a solution to the agricultural labor shortage. 

According to a search warrant, the employee works at the company's new $30 million corporate office it announced in May 2021 . The worker allegedly created and deleted some 115 orders from March 2024 to March 2025. Of those orders, 109 shipments, valued at $1,086,263.85, were delivered. The employee may have flown under the radar for a year, but then he got greedy and sent about 9,000 pounds...

Although FedEx confirmed the layoffs are not related to the company’s ‘Network 2.0’ plan for streamlining its package network, this is the company’s second layoff this year. The state’s labor department filed notice that 217 employees were previously laid off in Middle Tennessee in March.

Welcome to another episode of Gen Z in Manufacturing , a podcast that asks young people about their journeys in manufacturing, how they intend to influence the industry and what they are looking for from an employer. For this episode, I welcome Hannah Dannecker, a 26-year-old managing partner at Better Together Group , a collection of companies that focus on supplying support and tools to staffing...

AirBorn, a designer and manufacturer of interconnect solutions for industrial, defense, aerospace and medical applications, announced plans to close its facility in Taunton, Massachusetts.  The company filed its WARN report on August 20, which stated that the closure would affect 86 workers beginning at the end of 2025 and continuing through 2026.

Wistron’s project is part of a $500 billion AI manufacturing effort by Nvidia.

This morning, Toto USA opened a $224 million manufacturing facility in Morrow, Georgia, reshoring production of high-end, one-piece toilets from the Toto Group's plants in Asia. Toto USA is the Japanese manufacturer's Americas division based in Morrow, Georgia. The company, one of the largest plumbing manufacturers in the world that does more than $5.34 billion in annual sales, says it m...

Bioengineers at Harvard have created a soft, wearable robot that looks more like a smart jacket, designed to help stroke patients and individuals with neurodegenerative diseases, such as ALS, regain a bit of normalcy. The team has been working on the technology for years, and the most recent version deploys sensors, balloons, machine learning and a physics-based model to learn each patient's...