Interest rates help determine when and how much manufacturers and machine shops invest in new machinery, systems, and consumables. Now that the Federal Reserve Bank has cut interest rates for a third time – should manufacturers be ready to invest? What other factors are shaping their choices in 2025? Chris Chidzik, chief economist for AMT – the Association for Manufacturing Technology, explains it all.

2024 has been a year of remarkable growth and innovation for the manufacturing sector, with key trends making lasting impressions on the industry. Automation, AI, and advanced robotics have gained traction, while sustainability initiatives have become a central focus for many manufacturers. Additionally, global supply chain challenges and innovations in smart manufacturing have pushed companies to adapt and rethink their strategies. In this year’s end wrap-up, the editors from Endeavor Business Media’s Manufacturing Group look back at the most important trends that impacted manufacturing in 2024 and offer insights into the direction the industry is heading.

Anna Townshend is managing editor of Plant Services and has been a journalist and editor for almost 20 years. In addition to writing and editing thousands of articles in her career, she has been an active speaker on industry panels and presentations. In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, she reads her latest Maintenance Mindset article, where each week one of the Plant Services editors highlights important and interesting nuggets in the news about manufacturing and asset management.

About the Article

Maintenance Mindset: The future of emissions monitoring — Exploring NIST’s game-changing spectroscopy technology New laser technology from NIST researchers to measure greenhouse gas emissions could bring better methods to the plant floor. Written and read by Anna Townshend Read the article

• Paul Miller, VP and principal analyst, Smart Manufacturing & Future Mobility, Forrester Research
• Ryan Martin, senior research director for Digital Transformation, ABI Research

Learn everything you need to know about machine vision, its components, and its use in industrial applications.

About the Article

What Is Machine Vision? Learn the difference between computer and machine vision, the four types of machine vision systems, and the importance of lighting in imaging applications. Written by John D. Thrailkill Read by Laura Davis Read the article

Joe Kuhn, CMRP, former plant manager, engineer, and global reliability consultant, is now president of Lean Driven Reliability LLC. He is the author of the book “Zero to Hero: How to Jumpstart Your Reliability Journey Given Today’s Business Challenges” and the creator of the Joe Kuhn YouTube Channel, which offers content on starting your reliability journey and achieving financial independence. In our monthly podcast miniseries, Ask a Plant Manager, Joe considers a commonplace scenario facing the industry and offers his advice, as well as actions that you can take to get on track tomorrow. This episode offers insight into how to determine employee ratios on the plant floor and throughout the company.

In this episode, we break down how Doss has streamlined Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) and Order-to-Cash workflows to meet the needs of machinery and industrial companies. Traditional ERP systems often fall short for real-world teams in these industries—demanding lengthy setup times, high costs, and extensive customization. Doss’s Adaptive Resource Platform (ARP) takes a different approach, providing flexibility and usability without the common ERP headaches.

Our CPQ solution, inspired by customer needs in grinding and deburring, helps teams manage custom orders without creating bloated catalogs of unique SKUs. With Doss, teams can pull data from their catalogs, apply lookups and filters, and seamlessly manage both standard and custom configurations, all while maintaining a clean product catalog. Context-specific options adjust automatically for details like payment methods, sizes, and delivery locations, allowing workflows to adapt quickly without rigid coding.

On the Order-to-Cash side, Doss brings procurement, quoting, inventory, and invoicing processes into a single platform. For many industrial teams, these tasks are spread across multiple disconnected tools, which introduces inefficiencies and risks. Doss consolidates these functions, enabling teams to issue purchase orders, track inventory costs, and consolidate sales data from channels like Shopify, Amazon, and wholesale. This not only reduces manual coordination but also provides a unified view of the entire order cycle.

In this episode, we’ll cover the key elements of our CPQ and Order-to-Cash solutions, including insights from our customers and the specific challenges we address. Learn how Doss provides an efficient, composable solution for industrial teams looking to optimize operations and focus on growth without the overhead of traditional ERP implementations.

If 2024 was the year when the hype cycle for industrial AI hit its peak, what is in store for industry in 2025? Plant Services recently sat down with Aaron Merkin, Chief Technology Officer of Fluke Reliability, to get his insights and predictions on where manufacturing is headed. Merkin brings more than two decades of experience developing enterprise software across a variety of industries and markets, including roles at IBM, Dell, ABB, Aclara (now Hubbell), and Honeywell.