Foley & Lardner LLP recently co-hosted a roundtable discussion on Utah’s manufacturing industry with Utah Business.
Moderated by Tulinda Larsen, president of the Utah Advanced Materials Manufacturing Initiative, and featuring Foley senior counsel Nathan Imfeld and business leaders across the state’s manufacturing industry, roundtable attendees discussed Industry 4.0, sustainability, reshoring, and more.
In the Utah Business article summarizing the discussion, “Utah’s homegrown manufacturing industry,” Imfeld said that smart manufacturing is impacting clients. “Any government contractor, whether with the Department of Defense or any other government agency, deals with a regulatory regime that changes very slowly, if ever. They have to adapt their manufacturing processes to account for that,” he explained. “This means that the focus — if you’re talking about advanced manufacturing or Industry 4.0 — is more around saving labor than anything else.”
On reshoring, Imfeld explained that the issue is mainly regulatory. “It’s tariffs; it’s trade compliance,” he commented. “One interesting thing I’ve heard a lot of manufacturers focus on is how to get the engineering design expertise close to the manufacturing and sell that as a package to your customers.”
“You can add value to a product by giving customers access to the designers, builders, and installers,” he added. “Also, how much easier is it to go to a manufacturing facility just down the block?”