WASHINGTON--A slump in motor vehicle production pushed down U.S. factory output unexpectedly in July, the Federal Reserve said last week. According to the Fed, automobile production fell 3.6 percent in July, the fourth decline in the last five months.

BAODING, CHINA--Chinese automaker Great Wall Motor Co. said on Monday that it was interested in buying the Jeep brand. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, the Italian-controlled company that owns Jeep, said it had not heard from Great Wall, however, suggesting that considerable ground would have to be covered before a deal could be reached.

HANFORD, CA--Faraday Future recently abandoned plans to build its own tailor-made factory from scratch in Nevada, but has now signed a lease on a new ready-made production facility here. The company says the new factory should be ready to help deliver the first production FF 91 vehicles by the end of 2018.

Manufacturers of complex products, such as engines and transmissions, have long been using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to error-proof their processes, document quality, and deal with high-mix production.

One of the tricky parts of assembling an audio speaker is bonding the cone and surround—the parts that produce sound—to a metal frame.

If poet Gertrude Stein had also worked as an assembly machine operator, could she have ever written the line, “a rivet is a rivet is a rivet”? No one can say for sure, but it’s highly unlikely since operators know that rivets are distinctive in their design and function, as well as how they are installed.

That modern life can, and often does, imitate popular art is well established, even to the point of being a cliché. Much less commonplace is life improving upon art.

In manufacturing, the latest innovations in equipment, processes and materials often get tested first by automotive OEMs or Tier 1 suppliers. A good example of this is the Polimotor, an all-plastic engine that inventor Matti Holtzberg has worked on for nearly 40 years.