Bill Ford, executive chairman of Ford Motor Co., is now in Act III in his career at the automaker. The outcome will determine Ford Motor’s future and his legacy.
Consumer expectations have shifted to almost unrecognizable levels, catalyzed by innovative tech companies like Amazon, Lyft and Netflix. Previously acceptable levels of customer service are no longer good enough. Customers now expect real-time support and answers to complex questions at the ready, at a minimum.
Secure, accurate workholding sets the stage for consistent machining productivity. Depending on the parts and processes involved, workholding can be as simple and temporary as a plain vise or clamp or as complex and permanent as a machined and fabricated fixture that is custom-designed to hold a unique part.
For plant managers, being able to see and act on data is key. It holds the secrets to new product introduction velocity, real-time and dynamic optimization, and productivity stats at the worker level. To help plant managers tap into that data, Cisco is introducing three new solutions to the Connected Factory portfolio.
Within a month of the presidential election in November, the National Council For Advanced Manufacturing (NACFAM) and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) came out with policy recommendations for the burgeoning Trump administration.
Smarter factory systems connected via the cloud are the grand vision offered for the future factories that will fully leverage the best available tools from automation, software and machine tool builders.
The issues around OEE are not its utility but the ease and credibility of the data used to calculate it
Process improvement encompasses a wide range of tools, techniques and strategies. When properly deployed, shop-floor data collection and monitoring systems can help factory-floor managers leverage key data metrics including overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and total effective equipment performance (TEEP) that measure machine uptime and pinpoint bottlenecks or other problems in order to improve machining performance.
Taiichi Ohno is often quoted as declaring: “Without a standard, there can be no improvement.” The principles of lean do not work well when everyone is allowed to choose their own work method or work sequence in which to do a job: the outcome is unpredictable; flow and pull are impossible. This reduces throughput and the carefully crafted process develops unanticipated outcomes.
Design for manufacturing has been around for decades, but industry insiders say the next few years will be critical as technologies like additive manufacturing (AM) and virtual reality (VR) shape the future of the industry.
