List of U.S. 500 firms, including Apple, Nike, Hasbro, and 68 others, expunged from the manufacturers' inventory due to outsourcing production instead of creating their own goods
The revised 2023 U.S. 500 manufacturing list, recognised by the IndustryWeek, is a comprehensive ranking of the largest and best-performing publicly traded manufacturers in the country. This list serves as the foundation for the 50 Best Manufacturers subset.
The list is based on size, financial performance, and investment in operations. Among the top performers in the 2023 U.S. 500 list are major U.S.-based manufacturers such as Allison Transmission, which topped the 2025 IndustryWeek 50 Best Manufacturers list derived from this larger U.S. 500 list.
Other significant players include Kimberly-Clark and Nucor, both recognised as Dividend Kings and major producers in their respective sectors (household products and steel) with long histories and strong market presence.
However, the available data does not provide a comprehensive catalog of the revised 2023 U.S. 500 manufacturing companies nor details on which were removed explicitly due to outsourcing production. The list is led by firms like Allison Transmission, Kimberly-Clark, and Nucor, but specifics on removals for outsourcing are not present in the retrieved information.
In recent years, outsourcing production has become commonplace in the manufacturing sector. Companies such as Apple, Nike, Hasbro, Scholastic, and Funko are examples of companies whose products are made by suppliers, not the companies themselves. This trend has been observed in various industries, including the semiconductor world, where companies like Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and others are "fabless," meaning they have no fabrication plants.
The criteria and methodology for the 2023 IndustryWeek U.S. 500 list have been changed to focus on U.S.-based manufacturing companies. As a result, 71 companies with a combined $887 billion in sales have been eliminated from the 2023 list because they do not manufacture their own products.
In the electronic manufacturing services sector, Taiwan's Foxconn and Singapore's Flex are dominant players, along with U.S.-based Jabil Inc. These companies have large facilities in the U.S., but their reliance on outsourced production may have contributed to their exclusion from the 2023 U.S. 500 list.
The manufacturing sector in the U.S. continues to evolve, with a renewed focus on domestic production and a shift away from outsourced manufacturing. The revised 2023 U.S. 500 manufacturing list represents this shift, recognising the largest and best-performing U.S.-based manufacturers.
- The revised 2023 U.S. 500 manufacturing list, a significant part of the business and finance industry, is based on size, financial performance, and investment in operations, with a renewed focus on domestic production.
- Despite being dominant players in the electronic manufacturing services sector, companies like Foxconn, Flex, and Jabil Inc. might not have been included in the 2023 U.S. 500 list due to their reliance on outsourced production, a trend prevalent across various industries in the manufacturing sector.
