The success of reshoring doesn’t just depend on bringing production back—it requires a shift toward smarter, more flexible manufacturing.
- Investing in toolmaking automation reduces costs and lead times for injection molding, making reshoring viable.
- Automating injection mold tooling helps overcome labor shortages and remove bottlenecks to mass production.
- Metal 3D printing for injection mold tooling production helps manufacturers stay competitive while reducing reliance on offshore suppliers.
Local manufacturers face mounting challenges — from supply chain disruptions and geopolitical uncertainties to rising costs and a shrinking skilled labor pool. Reshoring production is a common solution that is a win for manufacturers and consumers. In fact, some sectors report the greatest number of OEMs attempting to reshore in almost two decades1.
However, bringing back manufacturing doesn’t mean simply returning the processes of the past to the factories next door. The employment landscape has shifted. Traditional manufacturing jobs, perceived as repetitive, manual tasks with declining benefits, aren’t appealing to workers in service-driven economies2. The big problem for local manufacturers is that labor productivity in the manufacturing sector has declined over the past ten years3 despite some advances in automation technology.
This shift is especially critical in injection mold tooling, which remains a major bottleneck for mass production.
The Need for Innovation in Injection Mold Tooling
One reason for this decline in productivity is the lack of investment in improving how we make things. According to the National Science Foundation4, only 23% of U.S. manufacturers are engaged in process innovation, and the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation found that Chinese manufacturers use 12 times more robots than their U.S. counterparts5.
Discussions around automation often focus on job loss, but the reality is automation and radical new ways of manufacturing aren’t destroying jobs as much as changing them. The World Economic Forum estimated that automation is expected to create 97 million new jobs6 . As we see automotive and aerospace companies invest heavily in automation, we see new high-skill roles in advanced manufacturing that offer engaging technical opportunities and fulfilling careers.
Schneider Electric, a leading global specialist in energy management, recently opened a next-generation facility in Shreveport, La. with a tenfold increase in automation that created 30% more skilled jobs. As Aamir Paul, President of North American operations, highlighted during a TIME100 talk, “There’s just not enough people in the U.S. So, if we’re going to keep the GDP growth we require, if we’re going to keep the U.S. this economic engine of the world, we’re going to need to find ways to engage people differently.”
For injection mold tooling, this means investing in automation, digital workflows, and advanced manufacturing techniques that allow manufacturers to increase productivity without increasing headcount
Automation to Help Solve Injection Mold Tooling Labor Challenges
While large corporations have the resources to invest in automation, small and mid-sized manufacturers – including molders and toolmakers – face the greatest labor shortages. A survey from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) found that, compared to large manufacturers, over 30% more of small producers cite difficulty in finding skilled workers as one of their top business challenges. Trying to overcome this, we do see some investments in innovative processes at the local machine shops, molders, foundries that are the backbone of U.S. production.
iRT Wheels, a California-based manufacturer frustrated with high costs and long lead times from overseas suppliers, leveraged 3D printing to rapidly produce wheel hubs in-house. Over two years, the reshoring initiative reduced costs by $100,000, drastically cut lead times, and led to the company creating new jobs domestically7.
Or Demir Engineering, a materials solutions and engineering service provider in the heart of Alberta’s oil sands, that invested in 3D printing to produce molds and cores for sand casting. Downtime of critical oil and gas operations can cost $40,000 per hour8, so reducing the turnaround time for a cast bronze replacement part from six months to five days has led to significant cost savings and efficiency gains.
Injection Mold Tooling: The Bottleneck of Mass Production
The status quo for 3D printing is advancing such low-volume, high-value niche applications. A more significant impact lies in transforming the mass production manufacturing methods that produce the things that surround us in our homes, hospitals, vehicles, and lives.
As reshoring initiatives increase the demand for plastic molded parts, manufacturers must also address the growing demand for injection mold tooling. Molds and inserts for injection molding are often slow to produce and incredibly costly, creating a bottleneck in many mass production workflows. The low labor costs of Asian toolmakers made it difficult for domestic companies to remain competitive and have caused the toolmaking workforce in the U.S. to shrink by half over the past quarter-century. This impacts injection mold tooling and creates a challenge to localizing production.
We must also reconcile the fact that traditional “manufacturing jobs” aren’t what the U.S. wants or needs. Rather, creating “advanced manufacturing jobs” is our goal. These jobs attract future generations, are critical to economic security, and enable a strong domestic production base to help deliver shorter, more secure supply chains with increasing productivity.
Metal 3D Printing Innovates Injection Mold Tooling
Innovation in the injection mold tooling used to mass produce the everyday products around us is a prime example of where advanced manufacturing technologies are critical to the success of reshoring volume manufacturing. Automating the fabrication of molds, dies, and fixtures with metal 3D printing accelerates production timelines, enabling more agile, competitive operations.
The challenges facing injection mold tooling outlined here are some of the reasons we founded Mantle. Mantle’s metal 3D printing technology is designed specifically for precision tooling and can help eliminate months and tens of thousands of dollars off traditional injection mold tooling fabrication cycles.
While the end-use parts and injection molding production methods stay the same, Mantle’s additive technology can automate up to 95% of a tool build and add value throughout the process. And autonomous does not mean humanless. Minimal hands-on user interaction during the Mantle mold manufacturing process allows employees to be more flexible and focus on high-value tasks that maximize performance and throughput. Automating the production of metal injection mold tooling allows manufacturers to regain control, making tooling a strategic advantage, not a barrier to success.
The Future of Injection Mold Tooling: Smarter, Faster, More Competitive
It is the embrace of cutting-edge technologies like additive manufacturing and automation that attracts workers to industrial sectors. Industry 4.0 is increasingly present in factories around the world and by using novel technology to automate manufacturing processes like injection molding, domestic manufacturers can appeal to next-generation talent.
This same automation is needed to deliver cost savings and make local manufacturing, including toolmaking for injection molding, more efficient, drastically reducing production cycles and optimizing responsiveness to help reverse the recent decline in manufacturing productivity. The future of manufacturing lies not in simply bringing production back home — but in successfully shifting to a new era of flexible processes and a flexible advanced manufacturing workforce that are smarter, more agile, and that help injection molding become more resilient to face future challenges.
For manufacturers looking to future-proof their operations, innovation in injection mold tooling isn’t optional—it’s the key to long-term success.
Looking to get learn more about how toolmaking automation could help your injection mold tooling workflow?
References:
- Manufacturers Association for Plastics Processors, “2023 MAPP State of the Plastics Industry Report,” 2023. Accessed here.
- “Are manufacturing jobs really that good?” The Economist, June 20, 2024. Accessed here.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Productivity and Costs by Industry: Manufacturing,” accessed here.
- National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, “Annual Business Survey: Data and Statistics,” 2023. Accessed here.
- Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, “Chinese manufacturers use 12 times more robots than US manufacturers when controlling for wages,” Sept. 5, 2023. Accessed here.
- World Economic Forum, “Recession and Automation Changes Our Future of Work, But There are Jobs Coming,” Oct 20, 2020. Accessed here
- Reshoring Institute, “Using 3D Printing for the Win!” 2012. Accessed here
- Modern Casting, a Publication of the American Foundry Society, “3D Printing Goes Mainstream in Metalcasting,” January 3, 2025. Accessed here
