Hillary Cargo

Texas Instruments marked a significant milestone with the groundbreaking ceremony for its new 300-mm semiconductor wafer fabrication plant (fab), LFAB2, in Lehi, Utah last week. The event was attended by Utah Governor Spencer Cox, local elected officials and community leaders, along with TI's President and CEO, Haviv Ilan.

The numbers are staggering: There currently are about 600,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs in the United States and the total is expected to balloon to 2.1 million by 2030, according to a recent study by the Manufacturing Institute. At the same time, many workers don’t have the skills needed to adapt to new technologies, and, in some cases, new candidates are ill-prepared to perform basic traditional manufacturing jobs.

En route to Industry 4.0, manufacturers face obstacles on a variety of fronts—from frayed and fraught supply chains outside their plants to lack of visibility inside their plants, and data silos inside and out. Despite the divergent issues, there could be a common solution: advanced software systems. A host of technologies and apps are already available—and you can bet even more are in the works—to help manufacturers solve these problems and improve their operations.