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Trade Wars
Harley-Davidson To Reshore Revolution Max Engine Production
Harley-Davidson is planning to bring its Revolution Max engine production back to the United States, the motorcycle giant said Tuesday. The company will also bring back production of its Pan America, Sportster S and Nightster models to its U.S. facilities, which the engine powers, according to the press release. The announcement is part of Harley-Davidson’s “Back to the Bricks” strategy unveiled last month, which aims to restore the manufacturer’s financial performance, regain market share and improve dealer relationships.
Harley-Davidson’s production returning to the U.S. means it will bring machining, powertrain assembly, painting and final vehicle assembly work to its plants in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the company said. The transition is expected to be completed before production of its model year 2028 motorcycles begins in 2027. Moreover, Harley-Davidson anticipates manufacturing over 100,000 motorcycles at its York, Pennsylvania, facility in 2027.
Read more at Manufacturing Dive
What Screwworm’s Appearance In U.S. Cattle Could Mean For Beef Prices This Summer
The arrival of the invasive New World screwworm in Texas, a parasitic fly whose larvae burrow into the flesh of living warm-blooded animals, could exacerbate existing inflation pain for Americans already grappling with high beef prices. Consumers received a bit of relief from the just-released consumer price index report, which tracks inflation across a wide range of goods and services. Ground beef prices fell -1.27% in May, but that did come after a 2.7% gain in April, and while off record highs, beef prices remain up 12.9% year over year.
The screwworm can cause painful wounds that can become life-threatening without treatment, and the pest poses a risk to livestock, wildlife, pets and, in uncommon cases, people. Despite the health and economic concerns, government officials and industry executives have said there is no threat to the food supply or public health. Colin Woodall, CEO of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the industry’s largest and oldest trade group, emphasized the safety of the nation’s beef supply and said the screwworm’s arrival was not a surprise. “We have been anticipating this for some time. It is not a shock to the supply. It is a pest, and like many other pests, we deal with it,” Woodall said, adding that ranchers have products available to treat cattle and keep them healthy.
Read more at CNBC
How Ford Flags Assembly Line Defects With IBM’s AI-Powered Inspection Tools
Ford Motor Co. has installed IBM’s AI-powered Maximo Visual Inspection technology at 17 of its North American manufacturing facilities to catch any assembly line defects in real-time using pictures taken of vehicle components in various stages of production using an iPhone and cloud-based platform. Ford refers to the inspection system internally as its Mobile AI Vision System, or MAIVS. It has been used to perform 150 million individual inspections at the automaker’s manufacturing facilities that flagged 400,000 quality issues that a human worker may have missed, according to the automaker.
Ford started its partnership with IBM in 2020. The company’s computer vision-based inspection technology is helping the automaker reduce warranty claims by identifying and fixing assembly line defects, as well as avoiding higher rework labor and repair costs to correct any issues after a vehicle is fully built. Ford collects both good and bad images to train machine learning models, which are deployed to iPhones where the system runs inference on the image and sends pass/fail results in real-time.
Read more at Wards Auto
UAW vs. Dauch vs. GM: the Strike's High Stakes
The United Auto Workers launched a strike on June 1 against a plant that produces axles for General Motors’ full-size trucks. Even though it is only a single facility with fewer than 1,000 workers, the outcome of the strike “game” will have profound implications for the UAW, GM, and the U.S. automotive industry. Though the strike is against Dauch Corporation – known until recently as American Axle & Manufacturing – the UAW’s main leverage comes from the strike’s potential impact on OEMs, particularly GM.
GM wants the strike to end quickly, since each day of lost full-size truck production at even a single plant reduces profit by at least $25M. The UAW is hoping to increase wages at suppliers substantially for a variety of strategic reasons and would like to use an increase at Dauch to set a new baseline. The unique history and leverage at Dauch may enable the UAW to demand more, last longer and push harder than at other suppliers, but could also cause it to overplay its hand. Because this game will be repeated across the unionized supply base and over time, GM needs to be very strategic in its role and careful in its tactics. The outcome of this strike will powerfully affect U.S. automotive industry bargaining through the next round of national negotiations with the Detroit 3 in 2028 and help determine its long-term competitiveness.
Read more at IndustryWeek
Schott Pharma Expands Glass Vial Production in Pennsylvania
Schott Pharma has inaugurated production lines for glass vials at its Lebanon, Pennsylvania, USA, site after a $60 million investment. The lines will increase capacity for both standard and sterile ready-to-use (RTU) glass vials designed to store a variety of drugs, from biologics and other complex injectable therapies to vaccines and emergency room medications. The new capabilities feature technology for efficient manufacturing and optimised output.
The investment was mostly funded by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) which aims to strengthen the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain and ensure reliable domestic production of critical primary packaging. The expansion increases the site’s annual production capacity for core vials, while more than tripling local capacity for high-value solutions. In addition to installing new converting lines for core borosilicate glass vials, the expansion in Lebanon included major infrastructure modernisation, line upgrades, and new technology to increase capacity.
Read more at Glass International
Boeing’s Everett 737 MAX production line takes off July 6, CEO says
A previously announced new production line in Everett for Boeing’s 737 MAX now has a start date, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said Friday. The North Line in Everett will begin production of the 737 MAX July 6, Ortberg told CNBC. Boeing added the Everett line to aid the aerospace company’s 2027 target production goal of 52 jets per month, a jump from its current approved monthly rate of 47. The North Line, where the company will manufacture 737s in Everett for the first time, will be capable of building all 737 MAX models but will initially focus on producing the 737 MAX 8, 9 and 10, the Daily Herald previously reported.
The Everett production line will replicate the Renton factory’s building process, aside from introducing the 737 Wing Transport Tool, which transports partially completed wings for final assembly in Everett. In May, Boeing announced it was raising its monthly 737 production rate from 42 to 47 after passing the Federal Aviation Administration’s capstone review. The production cap stems from a door plug that blew out of a 737 MAX in 2024 after it took off from Portland.
Read more at Herald Net
SpaceX IPO Demand Is Approaching Four Times Oversubscribed, Source Says
Elon Musk's SpaceX has drawn more than $250 billion of investor demand for what stands to be the largest-ever IPO, said people familiar with the matter on Tuesday, dwarfing the $75 billion the firm is seeking to raise. The deal's oversubscription rate is running at three and a half to four times the planned offering size, sources said, which bankers and investors say is the latest sign that demand is strong, as Reuters reported on Friday. Long-only funds have put in what one source described as sizable orders. Musk briefly joined some Zoom meetings with potential investors, a source said.
Investor demand is still subject to change before the IPO prices, expected on Thursday afternoon. Subscription figures reflect indications of interest rather than final allocations, which will be set at pricing. The sources added that some large institutional investors tend to submit orders late in the IPO process. The sources requested anonymity because the matter is confidential. The offering comes at a time of extreme volatility in markets, with the Nasdaq composite trading lower on Tuesday after posting its steepest decline in more than a year on Friday and bitcoin falling 2.8% on Tuesday, putting it 37% below its January high. Some analysts have speculated that one factor in the market retreat could be selling by SpaceX buyers raising funds for the IPO.
Read more at Reuters
GM To Produce Sodium-Ion Batteries For Electrical Grids Strained By AI Data Centers
General Motors is expanding efforts to capitalize on the expected growth of energy storage and data centers by promoting different battery cell chemistries, while also offering more support for its electric vehicle owners to combat higher energy costs. The Detroit automaker detailed plans Tuesday to increase its vehicle-to-grid capabilities — in which a vehicle can provide energy to the electric grid — for its EV customers and develop next-generation sodium-ion batteries that GM’s battery leader said “will reshape grid-scale energy storage.”
“Sodium-ion-powered energy storage systems have the potential to operate without active cooling and with much less system complexity,” Kurt Kelty, GM’s vice president of battery and sustainability, said Tuesday in a blog post. “In large energy storage systems, that matters.” GM is partnering with Denver-based startup Peak Energy on sodium-ion battery cell development, after the company already demonstrated how the chemistry can “translate into lower costs and greater reliability,” Kelty said. The automaker expects the tie-up with Peak Energy will produce sodium-ion cells for customer use after 2028.
Read more at CNBC
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