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A traditional cast with an outer layer made from plaster or fiberglass is more than sufficient for a human with a broken bone. But for a gorilla, which is about 10 times stronger than a human being and less likely to put up with some discomfort, that type of cast doesn’t stand a chance. Gladys, an 11-year-old gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, recently fractured her humerus while fighting with two younger females in her troop. Victoria McGee, Cincinnati Zoo’s Zoological Manager of Primates, said it’s pretty common for gorillas to engage in minor squabbles. She said, “She must have fallen in just the wrong way to break her arm, but the result was a complete, oblique fracture of her distal humerus.” Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.

Mercedes-Benz yesterday announced a new logistics concept: a demonstrator that combines eSprinter vans with e-cargo bikes to sustainably solve the last-mile riddle. The Sustaineer (sustainability pioneer) tech demonstrator promises a look at delivery transport of the future. So, what does that look like? The electric van is based on the automaker's eSprinter. Mercedes already has fully electric versions of every commercial and private van, and the company expects them to make up more than half of total sales by 2030. Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.

Humanoid robots are still a long way from full-scale rollouts across industrial, commercial and other settings. But if this week’s arrivals tell us anything, it’s that the pace of development may be speeding up. Boston Dynamics earlier this week made news when it bid a fond farewell to Atlas, the hydraulic robot it’s been tinkering with for nearly a decade. The company even assembled a send-off video full of clips of Atlas falling down. However, Boston Dynamics wasted almost no time in introducing its new all-electric version of Atlas. Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.

Last October, a 26-year-old employee at Faurecia Emissions Control Systems in Franklin, Ohio, was fatally crushed. According to OSHA, the worker had been on the job for about a year and was placing cardboard under a machine that bends vehicle exhaust pipes at the time of the accident. The company is a subsidiary of Faurecia North America which, in 2022, combined with Hella to form Forvia, one of the world’s largest automotive suppliers with more than 150,000 workers across more than 40 countries. Faurecia North America operates 29 factories in the U.S. Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.

Food company Conagra Brands announced that it would cease production operations and close its facility in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. The company claimed in a letter to the Bureau of Workforce Training that the move is designed to improve the effectiveness and efficiencies in its supply chain network. Conagra added in the letter that the closure, which is expected to be permanent, would affect all employment, including 25 management and administrative roles and 227 production and production support jobs. The employees have no union representation or bumping rights but will be offered severance benefits. Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.

U.S. retailer Walmart is turning to robots for help as it works to keep pace with e-commerce rivals like Amazon. The company said it will roll out 19 Class 1 electric, autonomous forklifts across four of its distribution centers, with the possibility of a wider deployment in the future. Walmart associates are currently being trained to operate the FoxBot, which is designed to handle a lot of the manual labor needed at the warehouse loading dock. Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.

The push towards electrics means changes in the automotive industry are impacting every OEM – even those tailor made for it. Elektrek first reported that EV leader Tesla is cutting “more than 10%” of its workers. Citing an internal memo, the company is reportedly looking at “cost reductions and increasing productivity” and will target its global workforce. While no hard number was released, 10% of Tesla’s worldwide staff would amount to 14,000 job cuts or more. Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.

The GMC Hummer has had an interesting evolution by anyone’s standards. What started as a gas guzzling monster SUV back in the 1990s and early aughts fell victim to the economic crunch and high gas prices of the Great Recession. But a decade or so after killing the model, GMC revealed that it would have new life in the form of an all-electric. That said, a lot has changed since the 2020 announcement, and as automakers have expanded their electric portfolios, they’ve just as quickly scaled them back. And while GMC had plans for several trims of the Hummer – including an entry version called the EV2 that was due out this spring – this is reportedly being adjusted, with GM Authority reporting the $86,000 base model is no longer in the works. Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.

In January 2024, the FDA issued a warning about dietary supplements purchased on popular e-commerce websites like Amazon and Etsy that were made with toxic ingredients. Tejocote root, part of the hawthorn family, is a Mexican root supplement marketed for weight loss. An FDA analysis found that these dietary supplements, labeled as tejocote root or Brazil seed, are adulterated. Instead of tejocote, they were substituted with yellow oleander, a poisonous plant native to Mexico and Central America. Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.

Last month, Boeing and its subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences sued Virgin Galactic, accusing Richard Branson’s space venture of skipping on bills and holding onto trade secrets. Now, Virgin has returned fire. The company last week countersued Boeing and Aurora, accusing the struggling aerospace company of “shoddy and incomplete work.” According to Reuters, Virgin Galactic said Boeing is breaching its contract and attempting to unlawfully force the return of intellectual property. Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.

The manufacturing industry has received a boost from recent legislation such as the CHIPS and Science Act, but industrial facilities still experience hundreds of hours of downtime annually. As the industrial landscape evolves and expands, the need for skilled maintenance workers becomes more paramount. Fluke Reliability, a division of electronic test tool manufacturer Fluke Corporation, provides a range of technologies such as eMaint and Prüftechnik, which are helping manufacturers do more with less resources. The addition of Azima DLI, an AI-powered vibration analytics and remote condition monitoring solution, looks to be the next big thing in machine maintenance. Hear from Fluke Corporation President Jason Waxman, Fluke Reliability Director of Product Management Michael DeMaria and Fluke Reliability President Ankush Malhotra as they discuss the capabilities of AI in industrial maintenance.

It’s been a staple in Danville, Illinois, since 1969, but on June 8, the Quaker Oats plant will close its doors. Last week, Quaker informed more than 500 workers in Danville they will be laid off but, perhaps, the writing was on the wall. Back in December, Quaker – a PepsiCo brand – paused production at the facility while it sorted out a product recall. Unfortunately, it wasn’t buttoned up quickly; what started with concerns of contamination risk in its granola soon ballooned into other products, ultimately requiring Quaker to recall some five dozen products – many of which are still not back on store shelves today. Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.

Canoo, like many other electric vehicle startups, is struggling to survive. And as is often the case in the early days of a company, expenditures exceed revenue. But one cost in particular stood out in Canoo’s latest earnings report. TechCrunch spotted an item near the bottom of a 10-K the company recently filed with the SEC and it details just how much Canoo is reimbursing CEO Tony Aquila for the use of his personal aircraft. The company said it helps cover certain costs and third-party payments, excluding certain incidental fees and expenses, and that it resulted in Canoo incurring approximately $1.7 million last year and $1.3 million in 2022. Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.

The Department of Justice announced that two Russian nationals who are Florida residents pleaded guilty to conspiring to acquire and illegally export controlled aviation technology to Russia without a license, violating the Export Control Reform Act. According to the DOJ, Oleg Sergeyevhich Patsulya and Vasilii Sergeyevich Besedin conspired to secure orders for aircraft components and parts from Russian buyers, the majority of which were commercial airline companies. The pair looked to obtain the parts, which included a Boeing 737’s carbon disc brake system, from U.S. suppliers and export them to Russia. Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.

The Department of Justice announced that a California man pleaded guilty to a scheme that involved selling more than $3.5 million worth of deceptive fan assemblies to the Department of Defense’s Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). According to the DOJ, the defendant, 63-year-old Steve H.S. Kim, controlled an unnamed company that sold fan assemblies to the DLA. But the fan assemblies were either counterfeit or misrepresented to be new. The DOJ added that some of the counterfeit fans went on to be installed, or were planned to be installed, with electrical components on an aircraft’s laser system, a nuclear submarine and a surface-to-air missile system. Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.

Freirich Foods has been in the meat business since 1921, when it was founded by young German sausage maker Julian Freirich on Long Island. The company, now based in Salisbury, North Carolina, makes a lot of meat, from pastrami and roast beef to other specialty items. However, the company is perhaps most known for corned beef. The family-owned business says it controls more than 40% of the New York Metro and New England markets. Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.

Offshore wind power projects set up shop in the water because it’s often too much of a logistical nightmare to transport their massive turbine blades inland. But that could change in the future if one startup is successful in building the world’s largest plane. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, offshore wind turbines can be as much as one-and-a-half times the height of the Washington Monument and feature blades the length of a football field. That’s specifically why Mark Lundstrom, an aerospace engineer, and his company, Radia, is building the WindRunner, a massive plane that’s also the length of a football field. If completed, the WindRunner will be the largest plane in the world in terms of length and cargo capacity. Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.

Tyson Foods is looking to refugees and immigrants to fill some of its factory jobs that handle duties such as placing cuts into trays, inspections for bones and washing meat, Bloomberg reported. The food processor employs some 100,000 people in these positions, and according to associate director of human resources Garrett Dolan, the company anticipates an annual departure of approximately 40% of those workers. As a result, Dolan said the company is looking to hire 52,000 people in 2024 to fill these positions. Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.

For this episode, I welcome Daniel Huang, an 18-year-old student in Florida. Huang is the creator of his high school’s 3D printing club that finished runner-up in SME’s 2023 Digital Manufacturing Challenge with their proposal to use 3D printing to create fully customizable pills for medical distribution. Huang has done research at the University of Florida Materials Science Lab, worked at Georgia Tech’s Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility and was recently recognized by SME as a 2023 “30 Under 30” honoree.

Last week, the EPA recognized the 103 U.S. factories to earn Energy Star certification in 2023. The award recognizes manufacturing plants in the top 25% of energy efficiency in their sector. According to the EPA, these plants prevented more than 8 million metric tons of CO2 emissions—that's the equivalent to the emissions from electricity used by more than 1.5 million homes. Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.