A Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientist and collaborators have demonstrated the first-ever “defect microscope” that can track how populations of defects deep inside macroscopic material

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Lean Six Sigma has improved manufacturing operations and processes for years now. Now the effect of the methodology is extending to supply chain and operations to help eliminate waste and reduce variation.

Supply chains are having a moment. In March 2021, one of the world’s largest container ships got wedged in the Suez Canal, blocking 10 percent of global trade for a few days and launching a flotilla of memes.

Supply chain management (SCM) has been defined as “the design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring of supply chain activities with the objective of creating net value, building a competitive infrastructure, leveraging worldwide logistics, synchronizing suppl

With recent disruptions critically impacting the autom

First published June 29, 2021, on MIT News.

This article is the fourth in a monthly series brought to you by the America Works initiative.

This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.

The premise for the NIST MEP Digital Supply-Chain Network project is familiar to MEP centers—many small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs) are often not ready for Industry 4.0 and don’t know how to implement it.