Last month, I had the pleasure of visiting Hershey, PA, for a weekend getaway. While there, my family toured Hershey Park, explored Chocolate World, and visited the Hershey Story Museum. I found the museum to be particularly interesting, as it focused on the technology behind chocolate production. Although cocoa had been around for centuries before Milton Hershey was born, his innovations in mass production in the early 1900s revolutionized chocolate and made the confection easily accessible to the general population.
In the 1920s, Hershey’s “advanced manufacturing” techniques included a motor-driven chocolate conching machine — which mixed and agitated the chocolate for an even finish — and a machine for wrapping Kisses, eliminating the need for hand-wrapping. (When Hershey’s Kisses were first produced in 1907, each chocolate was wrapped by hand!)
Automation is central to the design of the new Reese Chocolate Processing (RCP) facility, which opened in April 2025. This facility is reported to be Hershey’s first fully integrated digital manufacturing plant — operators will make adjustments and monitor processes from a central point, like modern plants in the chemical process industries. The first new manufacturing plant to be built in Hershey, PA, in more than three decades, the facility is a key part of Hershey’s broader multi-year, $1 billion investment strategy to modernize and automate its supply chain network.
Advanced manufacturing has always been rooted in automation. Today, it also leverages process intensification techniques to improve the efficiency of production while reducing waste, emissions, and energy usage. In this issue, our Special Section on Advanced Manufacturing (pp. 19–46) explores the themes of innovation, efficiency, and supply chain resilience. An introduction (p. 20) from AIChE’s RAPID Institute Interim Executive Director, Frank van Lier, highlights the importance of these themes in RAPID’s endeavors to drive advanced manufacturing research and development. The articles in this special section investigate lessons learned from pilot testing modular technologies, best practices for evaluating a process’s sustainability, and supply chain and modularization considerations in biomanufacturing.
Most advanced manufacturing innovations improve productivity and safety while reducing downtime and equipment failures. Central to these efforts is artificial intelligence (AI). AI is being used today in countless ways to speed up and improve research, process design, and process operation. But as AI becomes ubiquitous in the chemical process industries and in our day-to-day activities, so too does its environmental impact. The excessive water use and emissions generated by data centers reminds us how critical it is for engineers and industries to mitigate the negative downstream consequences of even the most impressive and innovative solutions. For a discussion on some of the environmental concerns being raised by AI, see “The Price of Progress: AI’s Climate Dilemma,” on pp. 16–17.
As I walked through the Hershey Story Museum, I couldn’t help but reflect on how far manufacturing has come. From hand-wrapped Kisses to AI-assisted process control, industry is constantly evolving. This month’s issue offers a window into that evolution, highlighting how engineers are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in advanced manufacturing.
Emily Petruzzelli, Editor-in-Chief
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