The Failure Nobody Instrumented

That lesson scales up. A companion piece argues that America needs more manufacturing capability, not just more factories. Operations leaders are trained to hunt bottlenecks inside the plant, but the constraint may sit outside it. Memory chips make the point concrete: they're in short supply, and the US isn't ramping up production — a fast-emerging constraint that could slow progress and raise costs for American consumers.

Lean's Real Failure Mode

On the continuous improvement front, the latest Lean Myth installment takes aim at a comfortable excuse:

"Lean and Six Sigma adoption often fail not because people inherently resist change, but because organizational trust, context, capability, and implementation practices are overlooked."

Blaming the workforce is easy. Examining whether the organization built the trust and capability to sustain change is harder — and apparently rarer.

Automotive: Patience Required

For automakers, 2025 brought a parade of challenges, and some met the steady drumbeat more capably than others, according to the 2026 IW U.S. 500 rankings. General Motors is asking investors for patience. Scaringe, meanwhile, discussed his team's mass-market plans.

Workforce and What's Next

The skilled labor shortage isn't easing. IndustryWeek's Anna Smith explored how an aging workforce and the reshoring drive are contributing to the skilled labor shortage — and what manufacturers are doing to address it. On the technology side, Chuck Orzechowski and Josh Renicker of the COO Forum discussed how operations leaders are navigating AI-driven disruption and workforce change.

Elsewhere in the week's news: California was shut out of funding, a semiconductor training lab opened, Hammond invested in Fort Worth, and a state of manufacturing report showed a big disconnect.