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Manufacturers across southwestern Pennsylvania continue to face a common constraint. Finding skilled talent that understands modern equipment, automation, and systems-based production. To address this gap, Catalyst Connection partnered with Pittsburgh Public Schools to deliver a hands-on mechatronics training program at SkillMill19, located inside the Manufacturing Innovation Center at Mill 19. Nineteen students and six educators from Allderdice High School participated in a three-day Introduction to Mechatronics course designed to…

Many manufacturers across Southwestern Pennsylvania are facing a similar challenge: Experienced operators are nearing retirement. New hires take weeks — sometimes months — to reach full productivity. Critical procedures live in binders, spreadsheets, or in the heads of a few key employees. Leadership lacks clear visibility into training progress, SOP compliance, or process performance. These are not isolated issues — they are operational risks. According to the U.S. Bureau…

Being a sole-source provider in the defense supply chain feels like job security. If you make a unique part or hold specialized knowledge, the assumption is that prime contractors and OEMs simply have no choice but to keep you around. That logic made sense for a long time. In the current cybersecurity environment, it is starting to work against suppliers who believe it. The Department of Defense now requires…

The Shift Is Already Underway The energy transition is often framed as a policy discussion or a long-term environmental goal. On the ground, it is something more immediate. It is a large-scale industrial shift that depends on manufacturing. Power generation is changing. Grid infrastructure is expanding. New systems are being built to store, move, and manage energy in different ways. None of that happens without fabricated components, engineered systems,…

Everyone talks about GPUs when they talk about AI. But there’s another piece of infrastructure quietly becoming a massive bottleneck: power equipment. AI data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity. A single large facility can use as much power as a small city. As companies race to build new AI infrastructure, the limiting factor isn’t always computing hardware. Increasingly, it’s the electrical systems needed to run the facility. Transformers,…