All Features
Zach Winn
There are some jobs human bodies just weren’t meant to do. Unloading trucks and shipping containers is a repetitive, grueling task—and a big reason warehouse injury rates are more than twice the national average.
Pickle Robot Co. wants its machines to do the heavy lifting. The company’s one-armed…
Megan King
If you’ve flown in the U.S. in recent years, you’re probably familiar with the airport security experience of entering a booth, raising your hands above your head, and having a machine check your body. That machine is called a millimeter wave scanner.
I’ve done this many times and never given it…
Paul Hanaphy
Traditional styles of lecturing and imparting information can be ineffective in terms of student engagement and triggering deeper learning. This is especially challenging in certain subjects that are difficult to teach in a classroom anyway, and for those who process information differently.…
Heidi Drafall
Medical devices are engineered to solve complex clinical problems. Yet many enter the field without a full accounting for what happens after deployment. Hospitals depend on equipment that performs consistently. But even with strong designs, virtually all devices will eventually require preventive…
Kathryn Wagner
In today’s energy sector, regulatory complexity isn’t a temporary headache—it’s the new normal. Utilities face an accelerating torrent of mandates from multiple levels of government. This includes FERC reliability standards, EPA emissions rules, state-level renewable portfolio standards, …
George Yang
Your IT team enabled Copilot and Gemini last quarter without checking with the lawyers. Now your employees are putting company secrets into systems that nobody owns, nobody governs, and nobody can reliably retrieve when opposing counsel sends a subpoena.
You have a discovery problem, and it’s…
Gleb Tsipursky
The demos look slick, the promises even slicker. In slides and keynotes, agentic assistants plan, click, and ship your work while you sip coffee. Promoters like McKinsey call it the agentic AI advantage.
Then you put these systems on real client work and the wheels come off. The newest empirical…
Dan Steele
For years, manufacturers have been told the future of Industry 4.0 lives in the cloud. Vendors promised plug-and-play AI that could analyze everything, automate anything, and transform the factory floor overnight. In theory, this appears to work, but operationalizing cloud-based AI isn’t always…
Troy Harrison
Here’s something nobody saw coming: The generation most skeptical of AI isn’t the one that doesn’t understand it. It’s the one that understands it best.
Every new technology faces resistance. The internet? A fad. Smartphones? Unnecessary. Social media? A waste of time. But tech skepticism has…
Sierra Miller
Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, I didn’t have scientists for role models. In fact, I’m the first woman in my family to get a college degree, much less become a scientist.
I attended underfunded public schools where we didn’t have science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education beyond…
Paul Hanaphy
Regular inspection is absolutely vital with industrial transmission systems. Just like the gearbox in an everyday car, components are prone to wear, misalignment, and fatigue—issues that can lead to machinery failure. This isn’t just a matter of downtime but operator safety, too.
Traditionally,…
Gleb Tsipursky
The conversation about generative AI (gen AI) is unavoidable in today’s business landscape. It’s disruptive, transformative, and packed with potential—both thrilling and intimidating.
As organizations adopt gen AI to streamline operations, develop products, or enhance customer interactions, the…
Artem Kroupenev
Quality has always been a defining metric in manufacturing when it comes to industry trust, brand longevity, and customer loyalty. Manufacturers are already expected to abide by stringent regulations. But as economic complexity rises and experienced operators retire, maintaining consistent quality…
Bryan Christiansen
From manufacturing and mining to hospitality and healthcare, computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) have become all but essential. Wherever there are assets to maintain, a CMMS plays a critical role in reducing downtime, controlling costs, and keeping operations running smoothly.
But…
Mat Gilbert, John Robins
Physical AI—the embedding of digital intelligence into physical systems—is a promising but sometimes polarizing technology. Optimists point to the upside of combining AI and physical hardware: robot-assisted disaster zone evacuations, drone deliveries of critical supplies, and driver assistance…
Harish Jose
In this article, I want to explore an idea that often is framed in moral terms but is actually a cybernetic imperative: the necessity of diversity for viable systems. Whether we’re talking about societies, organizations, or even artificial intelligence systems, the principle remains consistent. A…
Erdem Dogukan Yilmaz, Tim Meyer
From the internet and smartphones to 3D printing, recent decades have ushered in general-purpose technology that increases efficiency and collapses the cost of routine tasks. The latest general-purpose technology—you guessed it, generative AI (gen AI)—has the potential to also extend the frontiers…
Elizabeth Weddle
The quality systems most medtech teams are stuck with aren’t built for how they work today. 21 CFR Part 820 was authorized by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1978, long before the software industry even existed. And while the regulations themselves aren’t going anywhere, the world they…
Adam Zewe
A robot searching for workers trapped in a partially collapsed mine shaft must rapidly generate a map of the scene and identify its location within that scene as it navigates the treacherous terrain.
Researchers have recently started building powerful machine-learning models to perform this…
Adam Zewe
What can we learn about human intelligence by studying how machines “think?” Can we better understand ourselves if we better understand the artificial intelligence systems that are becoming a more significant part of our everyday lives?
These questions may be deeply philosophical, but for Phillip…
Brian Brooks
The arrival of artificial intelligence (AI) in quality management has been met with a mixture of hype and skepticism. Is it just a faster anomaly detector, or is it truly transformative?
The answer depends on how we frame the problem. If we see AI merely as a way to speed up quality processes we…
Creaform
Your company works hard to bring quality products to market, but your current inefficient development process slows you down. Your engineers rely on traditional tools like measuring tapes, calipers, verniers, or photos to gather dimensions and document how to shorten time to market and lower…
Ken Feinstein
For decades, the one-dimensional (1D) barcode, the familiar pattern of black lines found on virtually every product, has been the universal language of global commerce. Yet, as the supply chain grows more complex, data-driven, and compliance-heavy, the limitations of traditional barcodes are…
Nimax
The global coding- and marking-equipment market is on a clear growth path. As shown in a recent Grand View Research report, the market was worth $17,528 million worldwide by the end of 2024.
Furthermore, GVR’s projections estimate the market value will reach $24,927 million by 2030, with a…
Adam Grabowski
To stay profitable as a manufacturer, you have to run a tight ship. I’ve been lucky enough to visit with owners and key people at thousands of manufacturers all over the world. My main goal during these visits is to listen and learn what makes them so good at what they do.
It turns out that the…