July's heat is on — and we're diving into the manufacturing landscape shaping our supply chains.
5 min read · July 2025
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As reshoring accelerates and tariffs reshape sourcing economics, understanding manufacturing types and supplier relationships is more valuable than ever. This month we break down the manufacturing landscape and explore the equities best positioned to capitalize on the domestic manufacturing renaissance.
The United States is in the early innings of the largest domestic manufacturing expansion in a generation. Semiconductor fabs, EV battery plants, pharmaceutical API facilities, and defense production lines are being built or expanded at a pace not seen since World War II. Understanding the different types of manufacturing — and the supplier ecosystems that support them — is foundational knowledge for anyone navigating this landscape.
Produces distinct, countable items: cars, electronics, furniture, machinery. Each unit is identifiable and can be tracked individually through the production process. Examples: automotive plants, electronics assembly lines, aerospace manufacturing facilities. Characterized by complex bills of materials (BOMs) — sometimes thousands of components per finished unit — multiple production stages, significant supplier coordination requirements, and detailed work-in-process (WIP) tracking. Automotive manufacturing is the archetype: a modern vehicle contains 30,000+ parts from hundreds of suppliers across dozens of countries.
Produces goods in bulk, often by mixing, separating, heating, or chemically transforming raw materials: chemicals, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, petroleum refining, plastics. The output is often continuous — a liquid, gas, or granular material — rather than individual countable units. Inventory and quality management look fundamentally different from discrete manufacturing: you measure by weight, volume, or concentration rather than unit count. Batch traceability and regulatory compliance (especially in pharma and food) are paramount concerns.
Combines discrete and process elements — the most common model in complex modern supply chains. A pharmaceutical company might use process manufacturing to produce active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), then discrete manufacturing for tablet pressing, coating, and packaging. A food company uses process manufacturing for sauce production, then discrete manufacturing for filling, labeling, and case packing. Most complex modern supply chains involve hybrid approaches, and the systems and metrics for managing each component must account for these differences.
Supply chains are only as strong as their supplier relationships. How you structure and manage these relationships determines your flexibility, cost position, and resilience. The reshoring movement has made this more complex: companies must simultaneously manage established offshore supplier relationships while building new domestic ones — often with suppliers that don't yet have the scale or process maturity of their overseas counterparts.
The reshoring trend is forcing companies to rebuild domestic supplier networks that atrophied over 30 years of offshoring. This takes time — supplier qualification, capacity development, and process alignment don't happen overnight. The companies winning today are those that started building domestic supplier relationships 2-3 years ago. The window to get ahead of this curve is narrowing.
"The reshoring movement isn't just a policy trend — it's a structural shift in how America makes things. Position accordingly."
The domestic manufacturing renaissance creates investable themes across multiple sectors. These aren't speculative bets — they're companies with direct, structural exposure to the trends reshaping where and how America makes things. Each represents a different dimension of the manufacturing supply chain buildout:
"The reshoring movement isn't just a policy trend — it's a structural shift in how America makes things. Position accordingly."
— Daivik Suresh, July 2025-DAIVIK SURESH-
Supply Chain + Business Analytics Enthusiast · July 2025Not financial advice. All opinions are personal. Investing involves risk including potential loss of principal.