It was the late 1990s, and entrepreneurs Steven Abramson and Sidney Rosenblatt were pitching an electronics giant on their new flat-screen technology. It didn't go well.

Manufacturing workers are retiring in droves, with an estimated 2.7 million jobs being vacated by 2025. At the same time, the growth and advancement of the industry is expected to create an additional 700,000 jobs for skilled manufacturing employees over the next decade. As a result, manufacturers are scrambling to fill this knowledge and skills deficit with the next generation of workers - millennials.

Now that 3-D printing is safely beyond the hype phase and has become an established part of many companies' product development and manufacturing processes, there has been a greater understanding of the technology's technical and business advantages. With that, more users are benefitting from lighter and more durable parts, increased design freedom and on-demand part production.

Even as regulators at home and abroad block deals, Chinese acquirers will spend $1.5tr buying companies abroad in the next decade, 70 percent more than the previous 10 years, Linklaters LLP said in a recent report.

Manufacturing is in the midst of a new Industrial Revolution: 3-D printing, the Internet of Things, robotics, artificial intelligence.

As a growing number of consulting firms have taken up the gauntlet of U.S. manufacturing's challenges in recent years, manufacturing executives have been inundated with information and explanations on a variety of popular trends, from IoT to 3-D printing to the rise of robotics.

Apple Inc. likes to say it supports two million U.S. jobs. Plans by the company's main manufacturing partner for a $10bn factory in Wisconsin will add at least 10,000 more, helping Apple fend off the threat of import tariffs on its most important product, the iPhone.