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Abstract Over the last few decades, globalization has weakened the US manufacturing sector. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed import dependencies and supply chain shocks that have raised public and private awareness of the need to rebuild domestic production. A range of new technologies, collectively called Industry 4.0, create opportunities to revolutionize domestic and local manufacturing. Success depends on further refinement of those technologies, broad implementation throughout private companies, and concerted efforts to rebuild the industrial commons, the national ecosystem of producers, suppliers, service providers, educators, and workforce necessary to regain a competitive, innovative manufacturing sector. A recent workshop sponsored by the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA) identified a range of challenges and opportunities to build a resilient, flexible, scalable, and high-quality manufacturing sector. This paper provides a strategic roadmap for regaining US manufacturing leadership by briefly summarizing discussions at the ERVA-sponsored workshop held in 2023 and providing additional analysis of key technical and economic issues that must be addressed to achieve dynamic, high-value manufacturing in the USA. The focus of this presentation is on discrete manufacturing of production of structural components, a large subset of total manufacturing that produces high-value inputs and finished products for domestic consumption and export.
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This content will become publicly available on February 9, 2026
Semiconductor Manufacturing Industry: Assessment, Challenges, and Future Trends
In this work we evaluate the state of the semiconductor manufacturing industry and its challenges and trends. Future trends in the industry are analyzed from three perspectives: the evolution of Industry 4.0, the advances in semiconductor materials, and the impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic. The semiconductor manufacturing industry witnessed an acute decline in the United States and other regions in the two decades prior to the CoVid-19 pandemic. The decline was only uncovered after the chip shortage of 2021 that resulted from the severe supply chain disruption. Trends in the industry were analyzed from three perspectives: Industry 4.0, advances in materials, and the Post-pandemic era. As a result of the evolution of the fourth generation of industry (Industry 4.0), trends in semiconductor manufacturing include robotization, which caused the industry to become the largest market for industrial robotics since 2020, and an all-time peak globalization. The semiconductor industry is a very globalized industry with corporates from different parts of the world taking part in the production of the final product. Although some materials such as carbon and Gallium Nitride show promising trends to replace silicon as the material of choice. It will likely not be before two or three decades when a semiconductor material will be able to replace silicon. Challenges for the industry include the shortage of the trained-workforce, and the added inter-country restrictions that may hinder the globalization of the industry.
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- PAR ID:
- 10588080
- Publisher / Repository:
- IEEE
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 979-8-3315-0699-5
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 5
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Semiconductor Manufacturing Industry Industry 4.0
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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