Industry Today

09/26/2026

New updates are live 🔗

Explore the latest press releases, insights, and industry news—all in one place.
👇
https://linktr.ee/industry_today

09/26/2026

Washington just proposed handing chemical plants back $230 million a year — here’s the catch

The EPA’s proposed “Common Sense Approach to Chemical Accident Prevention” would unwind much of the 2024 Risk Management Program expansion — scrapping most safer-technology analyses, narrowing third-party audit triggers, and rolling back employee participation, RAGAGEP documentation and public disclosure obligations. The agency pegs the savings at more than $230 million a year, and roughly 31,000 public comments are now under review ahead of a final rule expected in late 2026. Until then, RMP-covered facilities still have to comply with the 2024 rules — so the real question for EHS and capital planning teams is how much of that 2024 investment they keep building on.

Read more on Industry Today: industrytoday.com/epa-proposes-revisions-to-risk-management-program-rules

EPA’s proposed RMP revisions would roll back several 2024 requirements, reshape compliance obligations and reduce costs for regulated facilities.

09/24/2026

AI diligence, tariff exposure, financing flexibility — the three things that will make or break an industrial deal in 2026.

Industrial and manufacturing M&A momentum is holding up, but the risks that decide valuation have moved. Two Bass, Berry & Sims dealmakers argue that buyers and sellers now need to quantify AI use and IP ownership, model tariff and customs exposure against EBITDA, and stress-test supplier contract rights and covenant flexibility before they get to the table. Address it at the outset and you protect both value and ex*****on certainty — leave it to confirmatory diligence and you are renegotiating.

Read more on Industry Today: https://industrytoday.com/industrial-ma-in-2026-what-dealmakers-should-watch/

Industrial M&A dealmakers should focus on AI diligence, tariff exposure and financing flexibility to protect value and ex*****on certainty.

09/23/2026

Manufacturing finance teams put AI everywhere except where the money moves.

55% of manufacturing finance teams are using or piloting AI — but 50% of it sits in reporting and 30% in forecasting, versus just 10% in accounts payable and receivable. The result: 50% of manufacturing respondents say they haven’t seen clear AI benefits, against 33% across all industries. That’s a deployment problem, not a technology problem. The same pattern recognition and anomaly detection manufacturers already trust on the plant floor applies directly to an AP workflow running thousands of invoices a month — and with input costs moving weekly under tariff pressure, an invoice error stopped being an annoyance. Start with invoice capture, three-way PO matching, and payment anomaly detection.

Read more on Industry Today: https://industrytoday.com/where-ai-belongs-in-manufacturing-finance-operations/

AI can help manufacturing finance teams move beyond analytics to improve transactional workflows, reduce risk, and strengthen margins.

09/22/2026

Workforce shortages aren't only a hiring challenge — they're affecting manufacturing quality.

In OctaveIntelligence's 2026 Pulse of Quality in Manufacturing, 74% of manufacturers say they're navigating a workforce shortage or skills gap. Among those organizations, 86% say the challenge has negatively affected quality.

The findings show how closely workforce strategy and quality performance are becoming connected.

See the full 2026 report and benchmark your organization against industry peers:
https://industrytoday.com/2026-pulse-of-quality-in-manufacturing-survey-report/

09/17/2026

You can see your Tier 1 suppliers. That’s not where the disruption comes from.

The 2026 tariff reset is turning that gap into a balance-sheet problem.

With Section 122 expired, its Section 301 and 232 replacements carry no built-in sunset clause or rate ceiling. Commerce also retains retroactive clawback rights on certain aluminium tariff benefits. That means your exposure can shift because of an upstream commercial decision you may never see.

And in aerospace, defence and medical devices, qualifying an alternative supplier can take 12–24 months — turning a tariff shock today into a multi-year cost.

Time to move the risk perimeter from the purchase order to the production dependency.

🔎 Supply chain perspective from Simon Thompson | JAGGAER
https://industrytoday.com/why-2026-tariffs-are-exposing-supply-chain-blind-spots/

09/16/2026

Most manufacturers are preparing for the wrong Cyber Resilience Act deadline.

Teams may be building toward December 11, 2027 — but the CRA’s Article 14 vulnerability-reporting requirements began September 11, 2026.

That means notifying ENISA and a national CSIRT within 24 hours of confirming an actively exploited vulnerability, followed by a 72-hour notification and a final report after remediation.

Filing isn’t the hardest part. It’s determining within hours whether the vulnerability affects something you actually shipped. An ENISA survey of 194 SME manufacturers found only 13% were confident they could produce the required documentation.

Pre-designate an approver, establish your CSIRT channels and run a tabletop exercise against a real finding now — before an actual incident starts the clock.

🛡️ Compliance perspective from Doc McConnell | Finite State
https://industrytoday.com/can-your-team-meet-the-cras-24-hour-reporting-clock/

09/14/2026

Your veteran hiring program is measuring the wrong number.

Over 200,000 service members transition to civilian life every year, and manufacturers are sitting on roughly 409,000 open positions — so why is veteran hiring still so hard? Because most employers track career-fair attendance instead of placements, time-to-hire, and 90- and 180-day retention. The companies actually winning veteran talent replaced the banner with a year-round system: mapping role requirements against military experience before the candidate ever shows up, and onboarding built to translate that experience into their culture. Visibility gets you noticed once. Structure gets you remembered.

🎯 Workforce perspective from Karin Childress-Wiley | FourBlock
https://industrytoday.com/good-intentions-dont-hire-veterans-structure-does/

09/13/2026

Shift-Left Engineering Had One Stubborn Blind Spot for Years. AI Just Closed It.

Cross-domain validation — thermal, electromagnetic and structural interactions — was the blind spot shift-left engineering could never fully solve, because multiphysics behavior was difficult to model with enough fidelity to trust early.

AI-driven virtual prototyping and digital twins are changing that. Agentic AI can automate model configuration and parameter sweeps, ML surrogate models can approximate behavior at a fraction of the compute cost, and reinforcement learning can drive optimization.

The organizational shift is human-on-the-loop: engineers set design intent and supervise. Competitive advantage won’t go to whoever simulates fastest, but to whoever can decide sooner with confidence.

💡 Engineering perspective from Tom De Muer, PhD | Keysight
https://industrytoday.com/how-ai-is-transforming-shift-left-engineering/

09/11/2026

57% of Risk Leaders Say Turning an Opportunity Down Feels Safer. That's a Growth Problem.

With tariffs compressing margins, growth has to come from new markets and new buyers — but U.S. finance and risk leaders are wired to default to “no.” Coface survey data shows only 17% start by looking for a way into a new market while 31% start with what could go wrong, and 57% say declining an opportunity feels safer than building the case for it. AI won't rescue that instinct on its own: 80% call AI-driven early warning a priority, yet only 31% trust their data quality across markets. Underwrite the buyer, not the country rating.

📈 Growth perspective from Christina Montes de Oca | Coface North America
https://industrytoday.com/manufacturers-are-leaving-growth-on-the-table/