It is not surprising that the aerospace and defense industry exists at a higher plane of manufacturing. The components and end products being assembled must endure intense forces and pressures, are expected to perform without failure, and even the slightest mistake comes with extreme safety risks.
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.
Honeywell Aerospace, part of global commercial and consumer engineering conglomerate Honeywell, produces a large number of the impellers and blisks used in commercial aeroplanes.
Okuma America Corp., a maker of CNC machine tools, announced the debut of a virtual showroom.
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.
Longevity requires adaptation. Anticipating change and evolving to meet it do not guarantee success. But success over a long enough period is strong evidence that a shop had the foresight to hone vital skills.
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.