U.S. Manufacturing Today

In this episode of US Manufacturing Today powered by Veryable, host Matt Horine talks with former shop-floor leader and executive coach Marilyn Rosa-Green about the “pressure paradox” in manufacturing leadership—how high performers can swing between overdrive and avoidance, often leading to burnout. Green shares how her curiosity on the production floor shaped her career and explains how lack of f...

In this episode of US Manufacturing Today (powered by Veryable), Matt Horine interviews Shlomo Assa, chairman, president, and co-founder of Acclaro Medical, a serial founder in the laser industry with 20+ patents whose operations ship to 60 countries. Assa explains how COVID-era supply chain disruptions showed that IP alone isn’t enough; companies that outsource turnkey manufacturing lose control...

In this episode of US Manufacturing Today (powered by Veryable), Matt Horine interviews Josh Waldron, who describes how a car accident at 15 left him paralyzed and how he chose to remove the “comfortable retreat” by destroying his wheelchair to commit to walking, shaping his approach to challenges. Josh recounts building a precision manufacturing company from a garage during the 2008 recession, le...

In this episode of US Manufacturing Today (powered by Veryable), host Matt Horine speaks with Brian Fielkow, author of Making Safety Happen, about leading safety as a leadership discipline and enterprise risk issue. Fielkow lays out why safety must function as a non‑negotiable core value that never competes with production pressure, and how boards and executives ultimately shape safety outcomes th...

In this episode of U.S. Manufacturing Today (powered by Veryable), host Matt Horine interviews Chris Hale, founder and CEO of Klear, about how reshoring and rapid scaling compress timelines and expose a mismatch between fast-moving factory operations and slow, backward-looking traditional banking. Hale explains that step-change growth driven by aerospace, defense, energy, and other demand can brea...

In this episode of U.S. Manufacturing Today (powered by Veryable), host Matt Horine interviews Roei Ganzarski, CEO of Alitheon, about the trillion-dollar global problem of counterfeiting and gray-market fraud and why it is a safety and national security issue in industries like aerospace, automotive, and healthcare. Ganzarski shares examples including end-of-life aircraft engine parts sold as new...

In this episode of U.S. Manufacturing Today (powered by Veryable), host Matt Horine challenges the common claim that America has a labor shortage, arguing instead that the real problem is a shortage of incentives, reward, and ownership in tackling productivity. He says true labor scarcity would force wages up, yet manufacturing wages have barely risen in real terms for decades, while only genuinel...

In this episode of U.S. Manufacturing Today (powered by Veryable), host Matt Horine talks with Ryan Arends and Brett Kronick, co-founders of Origin8 Advisory, about supply chain traceability, defensible documentation, and supply chain security as reshoring accelerates. Drawing on their US Army backgrounds, they connect military accountability practices to corporate needs to prove—not just claim—co...

In this episode of U.S. Manufacturing Today (powered by Veryable) host Matt Horine interviews Ethan Giffin, founder/CEO of The B2B e-commerce agency and author of Closing the Digital Revenue Gap, about revenue leakage and added costs caused by manual B2B ordering. Giffin explains that most buyers prefer self-service and B2C-like experiences, and argues digital commerce should be treated as a true...

In Today's episode, Matt Horine interviews Ben Hansen about “profititis,” where revenue grows but net profit stays flat or declines, creating stress and vulnerability to shocks. Hansen, a former Microsoft and Fortune 100 executive and five-time Inc. 5000 founder, explains how rapid growth in his staffing business tripled revenue while shrinking net margin from about 20% to 7%, and argues manuf...

Matt Horine discusses the roughly 10 million metric tons of US e-waste generated annually, only about 15% of which is formally recycled, and how exporting it sends valuable copper, gold, and silver offshore. Guest Matt Bedingfield, global president of Mint Innovation, argues the US minerals challenge is primarily a processing and infrastructure problem, not mining, and frames e-waste as a national...

Our Host Matt Horine interviews Mohud (“Mo”) Mahmood, founder of the nonprofit More Monuments, whose mission is to build 1,000 new monuments across America honoring American history, industry, and ingenuity. Mo explains his goal of creating a new “world wonder” in the U.S. and describes the group’s first completed project, a 54-foot Spindletop oil gusher replica in the Austin/Lockhart area at Prot...

In today's episode, Matt Horine speaks with Leo Rodriguez, VP of Los Angeles-based River Plate Inc., a family business founded in 1992 that evolved from freight coordination into an omni-channel 3PL providing warehousing, distribution, and fulfillment for DTC, Amazon, and wholesale retail. Rodriguez explains how e-commerce shifted operations from linear B2B shipping to multi-channel integratio...

US Manufacturing Today host Matt Horine interviews Nikki Barua, CEO and co-founder of Flipwork.ai , about the human side of AI transformation in manufacturing and why many initiatives stall. Barua argues companies often start by broadly deploying LLM licenses without clarity on job-specific value, structure, or new habits, creating an “exponential divide” as AI advances faster than people adapt. S...

Host Matt Horine discusses the “Battery Belt,” where eight states from Michigan to Georgia have attracted over $250B in announced EV and battery investments, and argues the key constraint isn’t permitting or supply chains but experienced people—engineers, operations leaders, and technical executives—to run new greenfield facilities. Guest Michael Chambers of the Chambers Group explains his APEX re...

The episode of US Manufacturing Today focuses on whether massive reindustrialization investments translate into real productive output, jobs, and supply chain resilience or become stranded, announcement-driven projects. Host Matt Horine interviews Patrick J. Wolf, executive director and chair of the Institute for American Manufacturing and Technology (IAMT), which conducts research through Aegis (...

In this episode, Matt Horine points out that manufacturing was central to American independence and remains vital as the U.S. approaches its 250th anniversary. It traces how Britain’s mercantilist policies and acts like the Iron Act (1750) and Wool Act suppressed colonial manufacturing, leaving the Continental Army dangerously dependent on foreign supplies, including gunpowder and basic clothing a...

Matt Horine interviews Maxter Healthcare leaders Kevin Shutack, Nick Gilman, and Donny Chan about Master Healthcare's $500 million investment to build its first US nitrile glove manufacturing facility in Brazoria County, Texas, aimed at strengthening domestic PPE supply chain resilience after COVID-19 shortages. They explain why the pandemic accelerated a long-held vision, how site selection p...

In this episode, Matt Horine aggregates major manufacturing headlines and argues the U.S. industrial rebuild is already underway, with constraints shifting from politics and capital to operations. It highlights a DOJ Sherman Act indictment alleging four container makers controlling ~95% of global dry containers colluded to cap output and double prices during 2019–2021, underscoring supply-chain de...

In this episode of US Manufacturing Today, host Matt Horine welcomes Shannon Everett of American Truckers United (ATU). Shannon shares his deeply personal journey in the trucking industry and exposes systemic issues that threaten the livelihoods of American truck drivers. The discussion covers the alarming rise of non-domicile commercial driver’s licenses, wage dumping, fraud, and the overarching...

U.S. Manufacturing Today host Matt Horine interviews A.W. Schultz, Founder of AW Schultz Training and Industrial Transformation, about the shift from Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0 and what it means for manufacturers. Schultz describes Industry 5.0 as a rebalancing built on resiliency, sustainability, and a human-centric approach, arguing many digital investments underperform because people aren’t i...

In today's episode of U.S. Manufacturing Today, Matt Horine interviews Spencer Penn, Co-founder and CEO of LightSource, an AI-powered procurement platform for direct materials. Penn recounts leading sourcing for Tesla’s Model 3 scale-up and seeing $30B of parts managed via spreadsheets and email, inspiring him to found LightSource in 2021. The conversation argues procurement is strategically c...

In a solo episode of US Manufacturing Today, host Matt Horine argues that four converging developments signal the most significant U.S. industrial moment since World War II: manufacturing’s expansion, freight tightening, historic Defense Production Act actions, and defense demand spilling into commercial industry. March ISM manufacturing PMI rose to 52.7 (third straight month of expansion) with br...

This episode of U.S. Manufacturing Today features James DeMuth, CEO and co-founder of Seurat Technologies, discussing why reshoring at scale requires new manufacturing methods beyond traditional casting and machining. DeMuth explains how his work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on fusion power revealed a need for alloys and complex geometries suited to 3D printing, but limited by slow la...

U.S. Manufacturing Today host Matt Horine interviews Darragh de Stonndún, CEO of Automated Industrial Robotics (AIR), about why automation is accelerating and how manufacturers can deploy it successfully. He shares his path from a Guinness apprenticeship in Dublin to engineering and decades in industrial automation, emphasizing attention to detail and disciplined execution. AIR’s platform model u...