Before the coronavirus pandemic upended normal life and essentially shut down commercial airliners, the aviation industry had a projected need for 40,000 new aircraft—planes, helicopters, air taxis, and unmanned aerial vehicles—in the next 20 years.
If you were to rebuild your manufacturing business today, would you build it in the same way, or would you shape it differently to address new challenges and future innovations?
Part 1 of this three-part series on the Connected Machine Shop ran in the July issue of Manufacturing Engineering.
If Industry 3.0 is identified by the computerization of factory floor processes to make them “smart,” then Industry 4.0 can be understood as the expansion of the idea to include all of the non-factory floor inputs required to produce a quality product and a successful enterprise.
What a difference a month makes. In a survey by the Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network (MAGNET) in February, only 24 percent of Ohio manufacturers said innovation was a priority.
Today, it’s tremendously difficult to get products made. To turn an idea into a tangible object requires a list of difficult-to-obtain resources, including expensive machinery and capital, and a lot of time to program and configure machines.
New system detects process anomalies during metal cutting in machine tools.
The promise of 5G is tempting. Fast data speeds and low latency rates make wireless connectivity, and real-time monitoring and decision making a possibility. Cost, legacy systems, security and other issues might be a deterrent that keeps some from dipping their toes into 5G waters.
One of the biggest challenges that any shop faces in 2020 is finding skilled workers to backfill those baby boomers who are retiring, or simply finding staff to meet the demand of a healthy manufacturing economy.
The COVID-19 crisis caught all of us off guard and interrupted global systems in a way not experienced in recent memory.
