A Reshoring Reality Check

American manufacturing is “coming back,” but not in the way most people picture. In the latest episode of the Cutting Through the Noise podcast, Paperless Parts Co-Founder & CEO Jason Ray sat down with Bill Berrien, owner of Pindel Global Precision and founder of Liberty Precision, to talk about what Bill is seeing on the front lines of precision manufacturing. Here are the biggest, most practical takeaways:

1. Reshoring is real, but it’s not evenly distributed

Work is coming back from overseas, and quoting activity is increasing as more customers reevaluate supply risk, lead times, and reliability. But the rebound isn’t evenly distributed. Some traditional industrial sectors are softer while other segments remain strong. Defense, aerospace, and munitions in particular show sustained demand because many parts in these categories are structurally difficult (or impossible) to source outside the U.S. For 2026, expect pockets of strength, pockets of softness, and opportunities for shops that position themselves in the right lanes.

2. Manufacturing will “come back” highly automated

The core shift is that manufacturing isn’t returning in the form it left. The model that wins going forward is highly automated, process-enabled, and built around maximizing utilization of technology, whether that’s CNC capability, software, or workflow automation. The most successful shops will be the ones who raise output, consistency, and capacity per person. That shift also changes what “health” looks like for a shop: resilience comes from profitability, because profitable businesses can reinvest, pay competitively, and keep skilled people from leaving the industry.

3. Wage growth and value per person matters more than job counts

A flat manufacturing headcount doesn’t mean the industry is stagnant. It can mean the nature of the work is changing. As automation expands, more value is concentrated in fewer roles; roles that combine technical skill with critical thinking, troubleshooting, and process improvement. The takeaway is that productivity and wages become the more meaningful signals. Shops that invest in automation and training are increasingly able to support higher wages because each employee is producing (and protecting) significantly more value.

4. Technology is only as valuable as your adoption strategy

Many shops buy similar high-end equipment and software. The differentiator is adoption and utilization. There’s a consistent gap between what technology can do and what many businesses actually get out of it day-to-day. The competitive edge comes from leaning in after the purchase: building repeatable processes, training teams to use more of the capability, and intentionally converting “features” into throughput, quality, and margin. In other words, the ROI lies in the grind of implementation.

5. Upskilling starts with your culture

Lifelong upskilling isn’t optional in a world of accelerating automation and AI. But training only works when the culture supports it. The biggest blocker to upskilling is often ego and identity—people trying to use new tools to do the same work the same way, rather than letting automation remove low-value tasks and make room for higher-value ones. The most effective approach is hiring and developing people with curiosity, humility, and a growth mindset, then training those people into the evolving skills the business needs.

6. Automation should create capacity (and then you need to grow into it)

Automation is most powerful when it’s treated as fuel for growth. The healthiest end state is a sales-constrained business: operations are efficient enough to create capacity, and the organization has the quoting, sales, and customer strategy to fill that capacity with the right work. A useful way to measure this is revenue per employee, because higher revenue per employee supports higher wages per employee. Be weary of creating capacity without a plan to grow into it, as it often leads to underutilization, stalled investment, and internal mistrust.

7. Profitability requires discipline

A major theme is the need for part-level and customer-level profitability discipline. Many job shops fall into cycles of being too full or too empty, without adjusting pricing and customer mix intentionally enough to maintain healthy margins. The path out is routinely reviewing profitability, repricing unprofitable work, or letting it go entirely. The same applies to “one-off” equipment purchases made for a single customer job; if the equipment isn’t aligned with a repeatable sweet spot, it’s likely to become expensive floor decor. Defining an “ideal part profile” (your bullseye work) makes decision-making faster, reduces quoting noise, and helps investments compound instead of scatter.

8. The industry still has a perception problem

Modern manufacturing is far removed from outdated stereotypes, but the market for talent hasn’t caught up. Shops that open their doors to the world (through tours, local events, employee stories, newsletters, and social content) reshape how customers, parents, and future employees understand the industry. If manufacturing wants the next generation of talent, the industry has to show what the work actually looks like today.