Two trends have defined the last decade in machine shop manufacturing. On the one hand, digital technologies have promised to make everything—truly, everything—easier. On the other, the manufacturing marketplace has grown tougher and more volatile. So much so that the same decade that saw the popular rise of IIoT, predictive maintenance, and digital machine monitoring also saw profit margins shrink. In 2010, Modern Machine Shop found that the most competitive machine shops had profit margins around 13%. There’s been a slow decline since. Industry research shows average machine shop profit margins are below 8%, with the trajectory set to continue downward.

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