If American manufacturing is going to reassert worldwide leadership, the move will be based on bits and pixels. "Advanced" equipment, robotics, 3-D printing, cutting-edge processes, and other manifestations of digital technology are going to lead the way - if anything is - to a renaissance of U.S. manufacturing after a half-century of slippage, as domestic fabricators synergize the sort of determinative global edge their U.S.-based counterparts in the software industry enjoy in their own realm. 

Many top U.S. manufacturers already recognize this reality, of course, and have pushed the nation far down the road toward that goal. The federal government also has recently hopped on board with some initiatives to give various types of digital and other advanced manufacturing very real boosts. And with the ever-intensifying interstate derby to land capital investments and jobs in advanced manufacturing, new regions are coming to the fore to join traditional industrial capitals to nurture this unique American advantage. 

"Digital is how the United States wins in manufacturing," says William King, chief technology officer of the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute, a new research center on Goose Island in the Chicago River. It was launched in 2014 with $70 million in funding from the federal government and $250 million in commitments from many of the icons of U.S. manufacturing, including General Electric, John Deere, Procter & Gamble, Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing.