The Monthly Newsletter of the Council of Industry

May 22, 2025

We are pleased to present the Spring 2025 edition off HV MFG, the magazine by, for, and about Hudson Valley Manufacturing.

In this issue:

• Company Profile: Sun Chemical
• Leader profile: Adam Bosch, Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress
• Manufacturing News Briefs: News for the Hudson Valley
• Trade Strategies - Tariffs Are Reshaping Manufacturing
• Workforce Solutions : Invest in Interns
• Manufacturing Trends: Using AI to Transforms Your Supply Chain
• Cyber Security: CMMC Compliance
• Labor & Employment: Trump 2.0 - What You Need to Know
• Member Directory: A Current Listing of Council of Industry Members.
• Associate Member Directory: A Current Listing of Council of Industry Associate Members.
• Advertisers: The supporters that make HV MFG Possible

Thanks to Ad Essentials and Main Printing for helping us design and print HV Mfg!

Tariff News and Strategies

Free Markets and Tariffs: ITIF Provides A Macro Economic Explanation of Trump’s Tariffs

How does one account for the seeming contradiction that the Trump administration is the most free-market, small-government administration since the Coolidge administration, yet tariffs are the core of its economic policy? Traditionally, free marketeers have advocated for market forces to determine the terms of trade both between national economies (e.g., totally free trade with all nations) and within economies (e.g., limited regulations, no government programs to help industry, and a tax code that is neutral between industries and activities).

In his own way, President Trump embraces this framework. Certainly, for trade within the United States, Trump wants to slash regulations, have a tax code that raises less money and is neutral between activities and industries, and get rid of “industrial policies.” For trade between countries, Trump rightly sees that market forces are not the dominant force: Other nations’ mercantilist protectionism is a major factor, too. So, Trump sees tariffs as an across-the-board global price reset, wherein the market, not the government, selects the firms that succeed behind America’s tariff wall. Since other countries are cheating, either implicitly or explicitly, the market-neutral way to respond is with a market price signal: a tariff.

The problem, of course, is that there is a difference between potato chips and computer chips. Some U.S. industries and firms are critical to national defense and techno-economic power—and blanket tariffs are likely to hurt them. If a firm in an industry driven by advanced technology produces in America and sells a lot globally, but relies on imports for a significant part of its supply chain, it will likely lose global market share as tariffs drive up its production cost. Similarly, if a firm in an advanced industry sells most of its output in global markets, but other nations engage in tit-for-tat tariffs, it will end up with less global market share. And U.S. firms that operate globally might just decide to move production outside of America to avoid the tariffs.

Read more at ITIF

Industry Poll: Wait-And-See Becoming Strategy No. 1 Amid Tariff Uncertainty

Nearly 60% of business leaders say their operations have already been significantly affected by new tariffs imposed by the Trump administration or by U.S. trade partners responding to those measures. More than a third say their operating costs have jumped by at least 10%. Those are some of the main findings from a new survey conducted by Endeavor Business Intelligence of nearly 200 leaders from across the economy—with the manufacturing, automotive and construction sectors accounting for about two-thirds of respondents.

Also noteworthy from the poll: The uncertainty stemming from tariffs and other trade disputes has led nearly four out of 10 leadership teams to avoid making major strategic actions but instead adopt a wait-and-see stance. “More substantial shifts, like reshoring supply chains or investing in new capacity, remain rare at this early stage,” the EBI team said in a report.

More than one-third of survey respondents said they have raised prices to pass along cost increases. However, that figure is significantly below expectations that surfaced in a similar survey EBI conducted roughly six weeks ago. Another significant divergence from the April survey is that disruptions in supply chains appear to be more widespread than expected: 38% of business leaders said they are dealing with such upheavals, which is 16 points higher than the expectations of respondents to April’s survey.

Download the report at Endeavor Business Intelligence

Guiding a Manufacturing Business through Tariffs: IndustryWeek Webinar Recap

Business leaders want predictability so they can plan long term, and dozens of polls show that they don’t like President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff policies because they’re disruptive. Knowing, however, that certainty is almost always an illusion for manufacturers and no long-term plan survives contact with the market, leaders need to focus on the things that they can control, a panel of experts said on May 7 during a webinar hosted by IndustryWeek, Foundry Management & Technology, New Equipment Digest, Plant Services, Smart Industry, American Machinist and Material Handling & Logistics.

“There’s no leader on this call who would say that they’ve run their business through certain times,” said Rebecca Homkes, a lecturer at the London Business School Executive Education and author of Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times. “I think we're in an industry that's always had a period of change.” Joining Homkes on the panel were Chuck Orzechowski, CEO of the Chief Operating Officer Business Forum (COO Forum) and Chris Azur, president of Warwood Tool, a West Virginia manufacturer of hammers, axes, crowbars and other industrial hand tools. During the hourlong session, panelists discussed communications strategies, planning options, inventory management and motivating teams. A few key pieces of advice emerged.

Read more/Watch the Replay at IndustryWeek

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Serendipity has been the catalyst for many scientific breakthroughs, such as the discovery of penicillin and the development of LASIK surgery, but business leaders are often hesitant to embrace it, write professors Jerome Barthelemy and Nicolas Mottis. They point out leaders can foster innovation by creating environments that encourage unexpected discoveries. While it is sometimes confused with luck, serendipity is a process that involves three steps. 1. An unexpected event happens. 2. Someone sees value in the unexpected event. 3. Someone leverages the serendipitous opportunity.

Encourage openness to surprises. To foster openness to surprises, business leaders should regularly invite their team members to share the unexpected observations they’ve made. At first, they are likely to be skeptical. Once they begin tracking anomalies however, their ability to spot them will improve.

Foster cross-disciplinary interactions. Cross-disciplinary interaction lies at the heart of serendipity. When individuals with diverse backgrounds and skills come together, the exchange of perspectives can spark unexpected connections and lead to new opportunities.

Make experimentation an integral part of the culture. Companies are more likely to discover serendipitous opportunities when they empower employees to run small-scale experiments. While some of these experiments will fail, that doesn’t mean they are worthless.

Read more at Harvard Business Review

For decades, manufacturers have relied on forecasting models that assume the past is a reliable predictor of the future. Today, that assumption is crumbling. Market volatility, supply chain disruptions, and shifting consumer behaviors have exposed the cracks in traditional methods. What once offered a competitive advantage is now an operational liability. Consider the experience of a global technology manufacturer recently caught in the friction between complexity and legacy forecasting. Struggling to manage SKU-level demand across international markets, they faced ballooning inventory costs and inefficient labor allocation. Historical trendlines simply couldn't keep pace.

Predictive AI is not just a better forecast engine. It fundamentally changes the DNA of planning. Unlike traditional models that project forward from yesterday's patterns, predictive AI continuously adapts in real time. It captures complex, nonlinear relationships among variables like seasonality, channel dynamics, marketing activity, and external shocks. Instead of offering a single prediction, it provides a range of probable outcomes, each with an associated confidence level. When a global technology manufacturer turned to predictive AI, integrating diverse, real-time data from sales, marketing, and supply chain operations, they achieved a 25% reduction in inventory costs and a 15% drop in labor expenses. These aren't hypothetical results; they are hard proof that manufacturers who modernize their forecasting gain measurable, strategic advantages.

Read more at Smart Industry

Don’t get lulled into a false sense of cybersecurity just because you’re not hearing about manufacturers hammered with production losses or paying out massive ransomware demands. Threat actors are out there and waiting for you to lower your guard. Last year appeared quiet when it came to manufacturing and cybercrime. If you head over to BleepingComputer and check out the list of biggest cyberattack stories last year, the closest you get to a manufacturing-related incident was the CDK Global attack upon car dealerships that affected dealers for Stellantis, Ford and BMW.

But that’s because we only hear about the big attacks. Two recently-released annual cybersecurity reports, IBM’s X-Force Threat Intelligence Index and Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), repeated warnings about the dangers manufacturers face from cybercriminals. Erich Kron, security awareness advocate at KnowBe4, says the noise in the media only comes from attacks on the biggest manufacturers and over 90% of manufacturing companies have fewer than 100 employees. “The small size of these organizations is going to impact the reporting statistics greatly. With small organizations being the norm, there are going to be far less regulatory requirements for reporting than there are for the larger organizations.

Read more at IndustryWeek

Respondents to Deloitte study titled “Navigating Challenges to Implementation,” report up to 20% production output gains, a 20% rise in employee productivity, and 15% in unlocked capacity due to their adoption of new technology and upgrading their data foundations. The respondents—600 executives from U.S.-based or operated companies with annual revenue of $500 million or more and with over 1,000 employees—also reported that they had prioritized investment over the next two years in data, with 40% investing in data analytics, 29% in cloud computing, 29% in AI and 27% in IIoT.

While the study showed the C-suite is realizing value from the past several years of smart manufacturing investments, many are still facing significant challenges in managing complex digital transformations as they contend with operational risks, talent shortfalls and cybersecurity preparedness, according to Deloitte. “The smart manufacturing journey is still emerging, but its value is undeniable. Our survey shows that most responding manufacturers agree with the need to invest in smart manufacturing but require help navigating operational complexities to see meaningful results,” Tim Gaus, Deloitte’s smart manufacturing business leader and principal, said in a Deloitte release.

Read more at Smart Industry

The Spring Edition of HV Mfg Magazine is now Available online

The prospect of a global trade war and ever-intensifying competition are driving manufacturers to develop strategies to cut costs, increase efficiency and scale effectively to meet demand. Especially in the mid-market, manufacturers still rely on manual processes to manage daily operations. Unfortunately, this lack of digitization clouds their visibility into customer needs, machine maintenance, supply chain trends and much more. Leaders lack the information they need to make fast and informed decisions about expansion, capacity and how to best allocate resources. The three most important cost drivers for any manufacturer are labor, machinery and materials. The more information an organization has on these three drivers, the better positioned it will be to find opportunities for optimization.

Labor - As organizations automate to fill labor gaps, they need to ensure they’re implementing digital systems that can provide real-time data to track productivity. Additionally, many mid-market manufacturers still use timecards and spreadsheets to track employee information, both of which can be replaced with automated, digital systems such as a modern ERP. 

Machinery - As mid-market manufacturers grow, order volume, of course, increases, which makes it difficult to ensure high quality while also delivering on time with manual systems. As organizations modernize equipment, they should ensure that machine sensor data is fully integrated into production systems so leaders can accurately track and even predict equipment performance.

Materials - Manufacturers need to be able to trace materials end to end, and digitally enabling this capability has benefits beyond simplifying and ensuring the accuracy of regulatory compliance. Having this data on hand provides digital supply chain management systems —which are typically a key component of a modern ERP platform — with information that AI and analytics can use to identify supplier risks.

Read more at Plastics Machinery & Manufacturing

Digital change is not a one-size-fits-all concept, and if we make space for nuance, we’ll see it’s actually part of a non-linear spectrum with three distinct components: transformation, acceleration and optimization. Businesses can and should move fluidly across these modes based on changing goals, market dynamics or internal maturity. The problem is that everything gets blindly tagged as “transformation,” which shuts down more tailored conversations before they’ve even begun.

When every ambition is dressed up this way, it becomes challenging to be honest about what kind of change is actually needed, or is even possible. Some organizations absolutely need to overhaul entire systems and ways of operating (transformation). But others should leverage existing and new infrastructure to continuously and rapidly evolve experiences for customers (acceleration). Others need to fine-tune what they’ve already built to drive incremental benefits (optimization). Each of these goals is valid, but they require different approaches, investments and mindsets. Treating them as the same does no one any favors. And to complicate matters, both “accelerating” and “optimizing” digital operations might produce results that end up being “transformative” — you just won’t know without making space to understand the uniqueness of the three different elements.

Read more at Smart Brief on Leadership

Manufacturing is no stranger to automation. From robotic arms to predictive maintenance, the factory floor has been transformed. But there’s one area still heavily reliant on manual, human-driven processes: knowledge transfer. When experienced employees leave, they often take decades of application-specific knowledge with them, leaving behind gaps in productivity, confidence and efficiency. New employees struggle to get up to speed, and the seasoned employees who remain are stretched, answering repetitive questions.

To solve this issue, Rajkumar Chindanuru, a business applications engineer with over 20 years of IT experience, created a prototype knowledge automation bot. The knowledge bot is an AI-powered virtual agent capable of understanding natural language queries and responding with accurate, context-aware guidance taken from the organization’s internal documentation, application manuals and FAQs. The key components include: Natural language understanding (NLU to enable the bot to interpret complex, context-rich human queries accurately. Knowledge base integration to make the bot search through a knowledge hub of application knowledge, documentation and FAQs. Response generation to enable the bot to provide accurate, concise and conversational responses to the user’s questions. And continuous learning to train the bot to improve its responses with every interaction, learn new terms and adapt to user behavior.

Read more at IndustryWeek

Council of Industry Associate Member Trout Software has announced the launch of MissionReady, a turnkey program designed to help small and mid-sized manufacturers confidently enter and grow within the Defense Industrial Base (DIB). There is an incredible pool of talent ready to contribute to national defense—but complexity is holding them back. Requirements around cybersecurity, quality systems, and government registration often bury small teams in paperwork and slow their momentum. MissionReady changes that. Trout’s all-in-one platform offers:

• DIB registration support – hands-on help to complete SAM.gov, CAGE, and other required registrations.
• Compliance in a box – a physical appliance that protects Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and fast-tracks CMMC certification.
• Opportunity engine – smart tools that surface relevant RFIs and RFPs using AI and expert curation.
• Expert guidance – a team of defense procurement and cybersecurity specialists by manufacturer's side, every step of the way.

Read more at Trout

9 Out of 10 Business Leaders Expect Major Supplier Cost Increases – Supply & Demand Chain Executive

Regulatory Changes In DEI And Immigration Fuel Executive Anxiety – Benefits Pro

Upskilling Vital As AI Transforms Workforce – McKinsey

One Less Burden For Businesses: NY To Pay Off Unemployment Insurance Loan Debt – Rochester Business Journal

Planning for the Future: Five Business Succession Options and Their Tax Implications – Dannible & McKee

Employees Are Worried About How Tariffs Will Affect Their Pay. Should They Be? –HR Executive

Inside the Assembly Plant Where Corvette ZR1’s Engine Is Made – Assembly Magazine

‘WildFusion’ Technology Helps Robot Dog Traverse Difficult Terrain – The Engineer

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