American manufacturing is coming home, and the numbers are real. According to the Reshoring Initiative, U.S. companies and foreign investors announced 244,000 manufacturing jobs in 2024 through reshoring and foreign direct investment, pushing the cumulative total past two million jobs since 2010. The momentum is concentrated in high-tech, quality-critical sectors — and the Southeast is at the center of it, with South Carolina ranking among the top states for reshoring and FDI activity heading into 2025.
That is a genuine opportunity for domestic suppliers. But bringing aerospace and defense work back onto U.S. soil means inheriting the standard that governs it — and reshoring quality control under that standard is quickly becoming one of the defining challenges of the reindustrialization wave.
The Workforce Behind the Boom Can’t Keep Up
The constraint on reshoring is not demand or capital. It is people. The same Reshoring Initiative report notes that while U.S. manufacturing apprenticeships have risen 83 percent over the past decade, far more skilled workers are still needed to sustain reshoring growth. New and expanding plants are being announced faster than the regional talent pipelines that must staff them can respond.
That gap lands directly on the shop floor, and it hits hardest in the hands-on, repetitive work that quality-critical production depends on — a squeeze detailed in Why the Skilled-Labor Shortage Is Turning Robotic Finishing Into a Production Necessity in 2026. A supplier can win the contract, secure the building, and install the machines, and still be unable to reliably staff the skilled operators who keep quality consistent shift after shift. In aerospace and defense, that is not a minor inconvenience. It is a compliance problem.
The Quality Bar Doesn’t Move
Aerospace and defense customers do not lower their expectations for a new domestic supplier. They require AS9100, the quality management system standard published by SAE International for the aviation, space, and defense industries. The standard exists because the margin for error in aerospace is effectively zero, and it requires organizations to demonstrate that they can consistently deliver conforming products through documented, controlled, and traceable processes.
That word — consistently — is where reshored suppliers get squeezed. AS9100 is not satisfied by a good part; it is satisfied by a process that produces good parts predictably and can prove it did so, part after part, in an audit. Documentation, configuration control, and traceability are not paperwork bolted on at the end. They are the deliverable. A supplier that cannot demonstrate a repeatable process does not pass, regardless of how skilled its best operator happens to be on a given day.
Where Cleaning and Surface Prep Break Down
Nowhere is that repeatability harder to guarantee by hand than in cleaning and surface preparation. Pre-coating and pre-bond cleaning, contamination control, and surface conditioning are the quiet steps that determine whether a coating adheres, a bond holds, or a part passes inspection. When these steps are done manually, they vary with the operator, the tooling, and the hour of the shift — and that variability propagates downstream into exactly the coating-adhesion and bond failures that quality systems are designed to prevent.
The problem compounds because the failures often surface late, after further value has been added to the part, echoing the finishing and qualification challenges explored in Aerospace’s Additive Boom Has a Post-Processing Problem — Robots Are the Fix. A manual cleaning step that drifts out of specification is difficult to detect, difficult to document, and difficult to defend in front of an auditor. For a reshored supplier trying to prove AS9100 conformance with a thin, stretched workforce, inconsistent surface prep is one of the fastest ways to accumulate nonconformances.
Robots Deliver the Documented Consistency Audits Demand
This is precisely where robotic cleaning and surface-preparation cells change the equation. A programmed cell performs the same cleaning or conditioning sequence — the same path, pressure, and dwell time — on every part, removing the operator-to-operator variability that undermines both quality and auditability. Just as importantly, the process is inherently documented: parameters are set, logged, and repeatable, producing exactly the traceable, controlled record that AS9100 expects rather than one reconstructed after the fact.
The effect is to turn a compliance liability into a controlled, provable step. A robotic surface-prep process does not fatigue, does not improvise, and does not walk out the door with a retiring specialist’s know-how. It lets a reshored supplier hit the quality bar from day one and defend it under audit — while freeing its scarce skilled people to focus on inspection, process refinement, and the judgment work that genuinely requires them. In a reshoring wave defined by tight labor and unforgiving standards, that documented consistency is not a luxury. It is how the work stays onshore.
Forged Path Automation: Built for Reshored, Quality-Critical Work
Forged Path Automation designs, builds, programs, and supports robotic cleaning and surface-preparation systems for manufacturers operating under demanding quality standards. Founder-led and based in the Southeast — at the heart of the reshoring surge — FPA owns every phase, from process analysis through installation, operator training, and long-term support, so cleaning and surface prep become documented, repeatable, audit-ready processes instead of a staffing risk.
Our Services Include:
- Robotic Cleaning Automation — Robotic cells for part cleaning, contamination control, and pre-coating surface preparation that deliver consistent, documented results across every part and shift.
- Process Engineering and System Design — Feasibility analysis, cycle-time optimization, and automation strategy engineered around your production and quality requirements from the start.
Ready to Transform Your Operations? Contact Forged Path Automation to discuss how robotic cleaning and surface prep can turn quality compliance into a controlled, repeatable process.
Works Cited
“AS9100D: Quality Management Systems — Requirements for Aviation, Space, and Defense Organizations.” SAE International, Sept. 2016, www.sae.org/standards/as9100d-quality-management-systems-requirements-aviation-space-defense-organizations. Accessed 13 July 2026.
“Reshoring Initiative 2024 Annual Report Including 1Q2025 Insights.” Reshoring Initiative, 9 June 2025, reshorenow.org/june-9-2025/. Accessed 13 July 2026.
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- Aerospace’s Additive Boom Has a Post-Processing Problem — Robots Are the Fix
About the Author
Chris Urban is the Founder of Forged Path Automation. His 26+ year manufacturing career spans from an international manufacturing specialist trained in Zurich, Switzerland, to corporate President and business owner. Before launching Forged Path Automation (FPA), Chris scaled an industrial gas turbine business unit from its infancy to $50M in value, directed the zero-downtime relocation of 100+ industrial machines to a 150,000 sq. ft. Center of Excellence, and led US operations for a $2.3B global firm. Today, Chris leverages his deep technical roots and an MBA to engineer turnkey robotic finishing cells that deliver total production stability and clear ROI for high-mix manufacturers. Chris holds an advanced background in both the technical and financial sides of manufacturing, combining studies in Applied Science with a Master of Business Administration.
Connect with Chris on LinkedIn to talk shop or discuss your floor’s ROI.
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