All Features
The MEP National Network
Employees matter. They are difficult to find and hard to replace, especially in today’s labor market. Besides figuring out why someone leaves unexpectedly, it’s important to consider the other side of the equation—what about your company makes people stay.
The Manufacturers’ Guide to Finding and…
Bruce Hamilton
I’ll admit it: After five decades watching U.S. companies turning to simplistic accounting tricks to remain profitable, I’m discouraged.
I was a kid when I first discovered the Toyota Production System (TPS). My eyes were opened to the immense amount of waste in our production and business…
Ekin Ilseven
An organization’s resilience can’t be measured in advance. Crises, by definition, emerge not only from unfamiliar, disruptive, and unexpected events, but also when the immediate consequences of such events get entangled and intertwined with the complex dynamics of the organization.
Organizations…
(iotaSciences: Oxford, England) -- The Oxford-based leader in the rapidly growing field of single-cell handling solutions, iotaSciences, is releasing the first encouraging data for the use of its recently launched single-cell picking instrumentation, isoPick, based on the company’s proprietary…
(Monport Laser: Seattle) -- Monport Laser, a leading provider of laser engraving solutions, has launched new medium laser engravers. Designed to meet the growing demand for high-quality engraving in various industries, these machines offer precision, versatility, and user-friendliness for…
Stephanie Ojeda
The number of ISO 45001 certificates is growing fast, jumping 54% from 2020 to 2021, according to the ISO Survey.
This occupational health and safety standard is especially prevalent in manufacturing, where managing safety incidents is a core concern from the perspective of protecting workers,…
Kelley Jacobsen
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, medical device supply chains are one of the top priorities for health system leaders. Amid supply chain disruptions during the pandemic, hospitals scrambled to find enough devices to keep up with unprecedented demand. The global crisis revealed gaps in standard…
Emily Newton
Pumping systems are critical to many manufacturing operations. Consequently, any errors with this equipment can be costly. So, it’s important to catch oddities as soon as they occur. The internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) enable that kind of pump anomaly detection.…
(Marcum: New York) -- The results of Marcum’s 2023 National Manufacturing Survey, which features responses from hundreds of manufacturing CEOs and leaders nationwide, paint a mixed picture of confidence and concern against a backdrop of economic and technological changes. The Consumer and…
(CIMdata: Ann Arbor, MI) -- CIMdata Inc., a leading global strategic consulting and research firm focused on PLM (product life cycle management) and the digital transformation it enables, announced that it will offer its PLM certificate program in Santa Clara, California, from Dec. 4–Dec. 8, 2023…
(Hexagon: North Kingstown, RI) -- Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division has chosen nine manufacturing startups for its third Sixth Sense cohort. The selected companies were selected from a competitive pool of hundreds of applicants, distinguishing themselves with groundbreaking solutions…
Mike Figliuolo
Stupid stuff is going to happen. Expect it. It’s part of our complex and highly interdependent world. People will make mistakes. A lot of them. Layer on top of that some incredibly politically charged cultures (for more on that subject see “Hot Heads and Karma”), and there’s an abundance of…
Jones Loflin
I’ve been dabbling in AI (or ChatGPT as some of you may call it) for about eight months. I’ve used it to strengthen blog titles, make content “punchier,” and help me get some creative juices flowing.
However, by far my favorite thing to do with it is to ask it to explain a complex topic to a 5-…
(Blackwatch International: McLean, VA) -- Blackwatch International Corp. has been awarded a five-year, single-award, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract with a $96.9 million ceiling for Defense Microelectronics Activity (DMEA) to support the Advanced Reconfigurable…
NIST
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- In movies, when we see fiery car crashes or flaming planes on runways, we know they aren’t real. But in the real world, fuel fires must be quenched with special kinds of chemicals, and the ones that have been most commonly used are known as aqueous film-forming foams (…
Donald J. Wheeler
Many articles and some textbooks describe process behavior charts as a manual technique for keeping a process on target. For example, in Norway the words used for SPC (statistical process control) translate as “statistical process steering.” Here, we’ll look at using a process behavior chart to…
Elizabeth Z. Johnson, Michael Platt, Vartika Parasramka, Victoria Villacorta, Emily Foy, Natalie Richardson
Countless management and HR blogs, articles, and books are packed with advice about best practices for improving workplace culture, making teamwork more effective, ways to stay on task, and methods to get the most out of meetings. In parallel, organizations often query employees with self- and peer…
(Hiperbaric: Miami) -- Hiperbaric, a global leader in high-pressure technologies, will give an exclusive first look at an innovation that will improve food processing and preservation: high-pressure thermal processing (HPTP).
Invented by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, and further…
(Siemens: Munich) -- Moraine Park Technical College (MPTC) in West Bend, Wisconsin, operates its Applied Manufacturing Technology Center (AMTC) as a leading facility for training individuals to work in the manufacturing sector. With an emphasis on CNC, tool-and-die design, and tool-and-die making,…
NIST
Manufacturing Day, or MFG Day, has grown to mean many things since it was officially proclaimed in 2012. Some celebrate on the first Friday in October with an event at a manufacturing facility or a school. Others participate in a regional celebration at an events center. Some areas have a…
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
A team of scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has investigated the behavior of hafnium oxide, or hafnia, and its potential for use in novel semiconductor applications.
Materials such as hafnia exhibit ferroelectricity, which means that they are…
Anne Trafton
(MIT: Cambridge, MA) -- By mining data from X-ray images, researchers at MIT, Stanford University, SLAC National Accelerator, and the Toyota Research Institute have made significant new discoveries about the reactivity of lithium iron phosphate, a material used in batteries for electric cars and in…
(NewTek: Pennsauken, NJ) -- NewTek GAR series spring-loaded gage heads are used in automated dimensional gaging applications as part of inline inspection processes where the sensor probe must move out of the way between readings. The probes of these LVDTs extend when taking dimensional measurements…
William A. Levinson
The difference between common (or random) cause and special (or assignable) cause variation is the foundation of statistical process control (SPC). An SPC chart prevents tampering or overadjustment by assuming that the process is in control, i.e., special or assignable causes are absent unless a…
Matthew T. Hughes, Srinivas Garimella
Not only people need to stay cool, especially in a summer of record-breaking heat waves. Many machines, including cellphones, data centers, cars, and airplanes, become less efficient and degrade more quickly in extreme heat. Machines generate their own heat, too, which can make hot temperatures…
