Top Manufacturing Trends for 2025: What’s New?

Victoria Sokolova . Last Update: January 2, 2025 . Digital Transformation . 15 mins READ 0 comments

How is the manufacturing landscape going to look like in the near future? In a few words, the industry is going to evolve in three major areas: implementing recent technological advancements (Industry 4.0 and 5.0), finding ways to address post-pandemic challenges, and meeting sustainability requirements. Let’s do a deep dive into how the manufacturing trends are going to transform the industry in 2025.

Latest Trends in the Manufacturing Industry 

Addressing talent challenges

Despite the increased automation, most industries are still facing talent challenges, and manufacturing is no exception. An aging workforce, a lack of skilled workers, competition for the digital workforce with other industries, and difficulties in retaining talent—these are just some of the challenges for manufacturers, which they have been facing for several years and which are going to remain in 2025. What is more, the industry is going to face increasing demand as a result of continued investments and decreasing interest rates in the US, which will also current workforce shortages in the coming year. [1]

Manufacturers have made some progress in tackling talent issues and attracting and retaining talent, for example, they started to offer flexible scheduling to workers and reward them. However, there are still some measures to be taken in 2025:

  • Leveraging digital tools for more effective workforce planning and management (e.g., AI-driven applications).
  • Upskilling the existing employees and establishing relationships with educational institutions to provide students with the required skills.     
  • Tapping into retirees’ expertise to impart their knowledge to the young workers.   
  • Taking a holistic skill-based approach to talent management. 

In addition, as the talent shortages aren’t addressed quickly enough, the manufacturing sector is going to face one more challenge—delivering increased output with a decreased workforce. This requires manufacturing organizations to review their processes, increase work efficiency, and support available employees in upskilling and bridging their skill gaps. Therefore, addressing talent challenges will maintain its position among current manufacturing trends in 2025. 

Navigating supply chain disruptions 

Supply chain challenges have been affecting industries since the start of the pandemic. In 2025, they are expected to continue, which is explained by factors like rising costs for raw materials, workforce shortages, shipping delays resulting from geopolitical tension, etc. [1] 

Today, organizations have found some ways to overcome these challenges, and the situation is gradually getting better. However, there’s still a lot to be done to return it to the pre-pandemic level, especially with regard to the current geopolitical tensions. Let’s explore how manufacturers will optimize supply chain management in 2025. 

Digitalizing the supply chain 

Digitalization of the entire supply chain makes it an integrated ecosystem that is visible to all stakeholders—from suppliers to customers. This allows for achieving better visibility across the whole value chain and in such a way reduces risks, minimizes lead time, optimizes decision-making, and increases the supply chain resilience. For example, a manufacturer can create a digital twin of the supply chain to simulate diverse scenarios and get prepared for them.    

Reshoring 

The other way to achieve supply chain resilience is reshoring, e.g., relocating manufacturing facilities to an organization’s home country. This practice provides companies with numerous benefits:

  • It saves time and costs for transportation;
  • It optimizes quality control;
  • It reduces lead time and time to market;
  • It creates job opportunities for local people. 

As a result, this increases supply chain resilience and decreases its dependence on global issues, so this trend is expected to continue in 2025 and beyond.       

Diversification of suppliers

This proactive approach involves broadening a network of suppliers. This reduces dependence on a single supplier and promotes supply chain flexibility and resilience under conditions of various disruptions. Also, this approach contributes to achieving sustainability goals in some cases: e.g., when manufacturers choose local suppliers and reduce transportation-related carbon emissions.

Sustainability and related challenges 

Sustainability is one of the recent trends in manufacturing that is expected to remain relevant in 2025 and beyond—there are numerous legal requirements to reduce environmental impact in all industries, and manufacturing plays a pivotal role in meeting them. Green manufacturing involves reducing waste and environmental pollution, using recycled materials and renewable energy, etc. As a result, manufacturing companies are increasingly investing in green initiatives. 

At the same time, manufacturers face a number of challenges and risks related to implementing green initiatives, which will remain until the period of transition to green manufacturing is finished. These challenges include: 

  • Technical readiness for green manufacturing;
  • Higher production costs;
  • Customers’ readiness to use other materials and pay more;
  • Managing the batteries’ lifecycle.  

In 2025, manufacturers are expected to continue making efforts to address the above-mentioned challenges and succeed in implementing green initiatives (e.g., they can partner with external organizations providing sustainability solutions, look for renewable fuel technologies, invest in electrification, etc.). 

In addition, industrial companies will continue working on electrification and reducing carbon footprint of their products, which is confirmed by the results of Deloitte’s investor reports. [1]

Finally, achieving sustainability will be impossible without leveraging the so-called green software. So, in 2025 and beyond, manufacturers will integrate software tools that help them meet sustainability requirements (reducing waste, achieving energy efficiency and carbon neutrality). [2] 

Providing aftermarket services

Though this isn’t a new trend in manufacturing industry, it has become increasingly common for manufacturers to offer aftermarket services in recent years. This is also related to the more common use of advanced technologies, e.g., sensors, AI, IoT, virtual and augmented reality, machine learning, etc. These services range from supplying spare parts to AR-based troubleshooting assistance. Providing aftermarket services gives manufacturers numerous benefits, for example:

  • It creates opportunities for generating revenue; 
  • It gives companies a competitive advantage;
  • It contributes to customers’ loyalty.

Therefore, we expect this manufacturing trend to remain and evolve in 2025.

Technology Trends in Manufacturing  

Smart manufacturing

Under current conditions of economic turbulence, workforce shortage, and supply chain disruptions, manufacturing organizations should work towards increasing the efficiency of their operations, achieving business agility and resilience. This is why they are actively implementing the concept of smart factories that integrate data, sensors, and the latest technologies (AI, IoT, 5G, data analytics) in the production process. Here are some of the examples of advanced manufacturing technologies companies employ:

  • AI assists in performing complex tasks, enhancing decision-making, forecasting equipment failure, ensuring quality control, and more.
  • additive manufacturing allows for rapid prototyping, maintenance and repair as well as creating objects on demand, which reduces production time and dependence on the supply chain. 
  • The Industrial Internet of Things makes it possible to collect data from machines and other connected objects to analyze their conditions and performance. 
  • Collaborative robots (cobots) work together with people and can learn to perform new operations.  
  • Augmented and virtual reality solutions allow manufacturers to monitor and control the production process without the need to be on-site. 

Smart factories provide organizations with numerous benefits—they increase productivity and efficiency by optimizing processes, help reduce costs, provide end-to-end visibility of manufacturing operations, and support sustainability. [4]  

Generative AI

Generative AI is gaining momentum across industries and has become one of the manufacturing technology trends. As shown by the survey conducted by Deloitte [1], more than 55% of manufacturing companies already leverage generative AI, and about 40% are planning to increase investments in this technology in the coming years. Also, manufacturing companies have become increasingly focused on data quality to take advantage of generative AI. 

What are the areas of gen AI applications in manufacturing? First, it has the potential to improve product design. For example, manufacturers can use the technology to produce lighter and stronger components or optimize the use of available materials. Also, gen AI can be used to improve customer experience with chatbots and support systems. [3]

Dark factories

These factories are fully automated industrial facilities that manufacture products with minimal or without any human intervention. This approach is also called “lights-out manufacturing”, as they require no lighting for work. As these factories are fully automated, can operate 24/7, and you can find robots, AI, and advanced automation systems instead of people. What are the benefits of this approach to manufacturing? 

  • High efficiency (robots don’t get tired and don’t need to take breaks);
  • Reducing labor costs;
  • Increased safety: there are no risks for human workers when working on dangerous tasks;
  • Improved product quality: there’s no possibility for human errors and no need to address their consequences. 

An example of this factory is Xiaomi’s fully automated smart factory which is capable of producing 10 million smartphones a year. Despite the existing challenges these factories may face (high investments, cyber risks, costly maintenance, etc.), this manufacturing trend is expected to become more common in 2025 and beyond  

Metaverse

Metaverse is one of the latest trends in manufacturing technology. It involves leveraging cutting-edge technologies like extended reality, digital twins, AI, IoT, and collaborative environments to enable interaction between the physical and digital worlds, and thereby optimize manufacturing processes. The technology is applied to the following areas of manufacturing:

  • Design and prototyping;
  • Workforce development and training;
  • Optimization of manufacturing processes;
  • Predictive maintenance;
  • Optimizing supply chains. 

Metaverse in manufacturing can reduce costs for prototyping, improve collaboration between teams, enhance decision-making, and increase manufacturing companies’ agility and flexibility. So, this manufacturing technology trend is here to stay in 2025 and become more widespread.  

These technologies are shaping the present and the future of manufacturing industry. Therefore, manufacturers are expected to increase their investments in digital technologies that will help them improve operational efficiency, address workforce issues and geopolitical uncertainty, and provide them with growth opportunities.

Conclusion

The manufacturing industry trends aren’t going to change dramatically in 2025—most of the last years’ tendencies are expected to remain and evolve this year. First of all, manufacturers are expected to continue embracing digital transformation and leveraging the latest technological advancements, as it will help them gain a competitive advantage and address current challenges. Also, the industry is going to navigate the challenges caused by supply chain disruption and employee attrition. Finally, sustainability initiatives are expected to gain momentum this year—manufacturers are going to implement more and more initiatives aimed at decarbonization and electrification.

References

  1. 2025 Manufacturing Industry Outlook. Deloitte. Retrieved from: https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/manufacturing/manufacturing-industry-outlook.html
  2. Dimitrov, D. (2024). The Future of Manufacturing: Technology Trends for 2025 and Beyond. Forbes. Retrieved from:  https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbestechcouncil/2024/11/14/the-future-of-manufacturing-technology-trends-for-2025-and-beyond/
  3. Marr, B. (2024). 8 Game-Changing Manufacturing Trends That Will Define 2025. Forbes. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2024/12/06/8-game-changing-manufacturing-trends-that-will-define-2025/
  4. Top 10 Manufacturing Trends for 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.advancedtech.com/blog/manufacturing-trends/