All Features
Harry Hertz
Rest? The new normal will be about activity, you say. Actually, I believe some rest will be necessary. After the frenzy of activity since March 2020 to establish new work patterns and new home life patterns, many of us—especially those with young families—have been left totally exhausted. So some…
Ron Cowen
NIST physicist Zachary Levine doesn’t cook that often, but when he does, it can easily turn into a science experiment.
Two years ago, after he and his wife had endured a week of under-baked cookies and chicken that took forever to roast, Levine wasn’t content to simply recalibrate his oven…
Kristopher Lee
ASM International is a nonprofit professional society focused on providing scientific, engineering, and technical knowledge to its members and the materials science community. In its education and experimentation labs, it regularly works with innovative inspection solutions that have the potential…
Shobhendu Prabhakar
The “mantra” for continuous improvement is to learn from our mistakes. Not only learn but also take necessary actions and come up with strategies to prevent the recurrence of the same or similar mistakes. It is true for humans as well as for businesses. In business, especially in the oil and gas…
Stewart Black, Patrick van Esch
Millions of Americans are unemployed and looking for work. Hiring continues, but there’s far more demand for jobs than supply.
As scholars of human resources and management, we believe artificial intelligence (AI) could be a boon for job seekers who need an edge in a tight labor market like today’…
Brookhaven National Laboratory
A team of scientists working at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Brookhaven National Laboratory has designed an apparatus that can take simultaneous temperature and X-ray scattering measurements of a 3D printing process in real time, and…
John Wenz, Knowable Magazine
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
You hear a mechanical buzz. You look up, and there it is, hovering in the sky—four whirring rotors. Over your shoulder, you catch sight of someone tracking the flight and manipulating controls.
Drones, little flying vehicles with varying…
James Anderton
Injection mold making used to be a relatively simple business: machine the cavities and runners, polish, cross-drill for cooling, then shoot resin. Today, however, relentless pressure for lower part cost and higher productivity have led to bigger, faster machines with molds to match.
Multilayer…
Steven Forrest
The ongoing pandemic will likely change, if not completely alter, many aspects of our daily lives. One facet that will significantly change is the way we work. After months of being in lockdown, the massive shift to working from home has proven to be effective in helping employees stay productive.…
Andrew Peterson
Collaborative robots are increasingly attractive to manufacturers that require flexible solutions for their growing product mix but may not have the scale of work or capital resources needed to justify larger investments in automation systems.
These collaborative robots, commonly referred to as “…
Benjamin Kessler
The full economic impact of the pandemic has yet to be felt. However, it seems beyond dispute that Covid-19 and globalization don’t mix well. Of course, all economic activity is suffering in this worldwide recession—but the global breadth of business may experience an especially acute shrinking…
Farhana Ahmad
Despite juggling competing priorities, building resilient systems and processes within their organizations continues to be top of mind for business leaders today and is anticipated to be so for the foreseeable future. As such, the first logical step is to turn to existing methods and approaches…
Bill Bernstein, Teodar Vernica
Step into the factory of the future. Alicia, an operations manager, sits at her workstation viewing a digitally enhanced video feed of the facility, using cameras installed in strategic locations. Wearing safety gear, a maintenance engineer named Bob checks his tablet for the next machine to fix.…
Richard Fendler
Job satisfaction is important to most people, and yet this can be a fairly nebulous concept that is tricky to achieve and also tough to measure in a meaningful way.
Luckily a number of software platforms designed to manage employee recognition have emerged in recent years, as outlined in this…
Thomas R. Cutler
The old picking methods of paper, pick-to-light, and voice-picking are almost impossible when employees must practice social distancing, use PPE (personal protective equipment), and avoid contact that could potentially exacerbate the spread of Covid-19. One viable solution is pick-by-vision, which…
Betsy Mason, Knowable Magazine
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
Imagine a science textbook without images. No charts, no graphs, no illustrations or diagrams with arrows and labels. The science would be a lot harder to understand.
That's because humans are visual creatures by nature. People absorb…
Jason Chester
For manufacturers—as for all of us—the past few months have been a blur of fast adaptations and long periods of waiting. At the start of the pandemic, many manufacturers did what they have always done in the face of disruption: adapt and find the fastest workaround for the challenge at hand.…
Denrie Caila Perez
With most industries shifting to remote work due to the Covid-19 pandemic, companies are looking at how they can innovate the work-from-home experience. Toyota’s Ann Harbor, Michigan, research and development team was set to complete the automaker’s newest generation of the Sienna in March 2020.…
Antoine Tirard, Claire Harbour
As clients clamor for speedy results and headhunters increasingly rely on the latest data analytic tools, there is a danger of dull, predictable candidates being churned out for results that serve but do not shine.
At a recent panel on careers, a prominent headhunter said: “Search consultants,…
Bob Holmes, Knowable Magazine
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
Infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci. Coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx. County health officials across the United States. The Covid-19 pandemic has led to the emergence of a new set of household names: those in the media…
Jacob Horne
Cybersecurity is a complex topic no matter what industry vertical it is applied to. In order to reduce that complexity, it helps to frame cybersecurity in the context of the business. For manufacturers, there is a familiar concept that can be used: Begin with the end in mind.
So what does the end…
Ryan E. Day
Every so often an event, invention, or idea is so momentous it changes the face of entire industries. In some ways, the global response to Covid-19 has been such an event. In the case of metrology, however, it has only underscored that the foundational requirements of test and measurement remain…
Bruce Hamilton
Shortly after a recent post, in which I referred to sowing the seeds of change, I enlisted the help of my son, Ben, to reseed a particularly bare area of our yard. I’d neglected this spot for a few years, and it had become sparse and dormant.
Fixing the problem was therefore not merely a matter of…
Lola Butcher, Knowable Magazine
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
In February 2020, the month before Covid-19 hit Boston, Partners Healthcare, the huge health system that includes Massachusetts General Hospital, treated 1,600 patients via video visits. By April, the number of patients seeking care through…
Greg Hutchins
My recent epiphany was that the lens for all work and even for everyday living during the next few years will be risk-based. Why do I make this case?
In January 2020, my company was selected to participate in the largest pitch fest in the Northwest, TechfestNW, which was originally scheduled for…
