American manufacturing is gaining momentum again. Companies are reshoring production, policymakers are pushing domestic industrial growth, and manufacturers are investing heavily in digital transformation.

But this resurgence is not evenly distributed. Growth is concentrating in the states, companies, and facilities best equipped to modernize quickly. Increasingly, that means manufacturers with structured, model-based operations.

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Manufacturers continue bringing operations back to the United States in pursuit of supply chain resilience, shorter lead times, and geopolitical stability. But reshoring alone does not solve operational challenges. Domestic production must still be structured to execute efficiently at scale.

Manufacturing growth is concentrating heavily in a small number of states, with just 12 accounting for 95% of job gains. Industrial expansion is increasingly clustering around regions with the infrastructure, workforce, and operational maturity to support modern production.

Lockheed Martin’s latest supplier guidance reinforces that model-based enterprise is no longer aspirational. It is becoming an operational expectation across the defense industrial base. Prime contractors are increasingly pushing suppliers toward model-centric workflows to improve speed, traceability, and production consistency.

Manufacturing is coming back to the United States.

But the winners in this next industrial era will not simply be those who build more capacity.

They will be the ones who build smarter operations: structured, scalable, and model-based from the start.

Thanks for reading this issue of The Model-Based Manufacturer.

— The Dirac Team