Skilled Workforce—Perception vs. Reality Our first topic of conversation addressed the skilled labor gap, a topic regularly appearing in B2B and trade publications involved in both manufacturing and engineering. Today, finding and retaining the right talent with the necessary skillsets remains a challenge. “Finding and retaining the right talent is still a challenge—not only from a technical standpoint, but in finding people who want to come in every day and work in a factory or machine shop. For a variety of social and cultural reasons, accelerated by COVID, fewer employees are interested in a traditional nine-to-five job. Many are drawn to remote or independent work and greater flexibility.” If it wasn’t challenging enough to convince middle-school and high-school students to consider manufacturing as a career, it’s become increasingly difficult to convince their parents. “There remains this kind of negative attitude towards manufacturing across the board. We spend a lot of time talking to local high schools. We even try to get into the middle school level. And honestly, the kids are interested. They think we’re making cool stuff. What we’re fighting against now is the presumptions of their parents. ‘You don’t want to work in a shop,’ You don’t want a career in manufacturing.’ So, we must convince the students and their parents on the lasting benefits of getting into the skilled trades,” Young said.

Lead Times and General Volatility According to Young, lead times on special materials is another 2026 challenge. “Usually due to geopolitical reasons, some specialty materials—needed for defense and aerospace work—tend to lag and can’t meet the expectations of customers. Balancing these expectations becomes a huge topic of conversation,” Young said. “We live in this immediacy culture, right, and we sometimes need to explain the differences in producing say a prototype gear on a 3D-printer versus a cut gear. Every project is a little different.” Cost pressure remains a key challenge in 2026. “This is always an issue. There’s been a huge increase in labor costs. I think the wage rates in the labor market have been lagging for such a long time and they’re finally catching up. This is fantastic, but there are other pieces of inflation—post COVID—that are kind of offsetting that,” Young said. It becomes a careful, strategic dance to manage costs and lead times. The key is the manufacturer’s ability to pass along reasonable customer increases to the customers. This becomes a priority. “These are conversations we’re having all the time,” Young noted. AI and Digital Manufacturing Forest City Gear prides itself on being at the forefront of manufacturing technology. The company is expanding its AI toolkit to enhance shop floor operations. “Our ERP system has a lot of information but has limited reporting capability. We have a super sharp young man here at FCG who is utilizing AI to pull reports and documentation that used to be very burdensome to track in Excel,” Young said. “Our big goal for 2026 is to leverage AI for our hob and shaper cutter inventory. We have a huge number of hobs and shaper cutters in stock. We sharpen a lot of these in house, but the inventory is in this spreadsheet that has existed since DOS.” With all the available information on tool life, tool wear and additional specifications, FCG is hoping to create an interactive inventory using AI resources. “We’re extremely excited about this specific project and in doing so hope to learn other ways to leverage AI tools across the shop floor in the future,” Young said. Future Considerations Young said she is all-in on the possibilities of AI in manufacturing moving forward. “It’s going to be a focal point across all of manufacturing, really across every sector at this point, right? We’ll navigate where it makes sense to employ these tools on the floor and figure out where it probably won’t. Personally, I’m excited to see such rapid change taking place in gear manufacturing in the next five to ten years through AI deployment.” One area Young will approach with caution is compliance. “We can take a part that’s designed for a refrigerator in my kitchen and plug and play that into AI. But I can’t do that for a lot of the parts currently in gear manufacturing. So, getting platforms that are truly compatible with Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) or even NIST 800-171 is going to be critical to deploy AI tools.” Another area to keep an eye on is mergers and acquisitions. Young knows of at least two players in the industry who are extremely active in acquiring gear companies. “The face of gear manufacturing is constantly changing. I wouldn’t be at surprised to see some additional mergers in the future,” Young added. Lastly, Young believes workforce development in manufacturing is going to change drastically in the coming years. “The jobs where you might see a significant number of reductions due to AI will be white collar jobs. There will be a huge shift in the dynamics between white- and blue-collar workers. We’ll see a positive push for sheet metal workers, electricians, plumbers, welders, etc. All these classic skilled trade positions will be sought after, and that’s extremely exciting,” Young said.