Risk-management technology is beginning to help manufacturers cope with the supply-chain upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, said Thomas Derry, CEO of the Institute for Supply Management: “We are a lot better at managing risk than even 10 years ago.”
Tacoma, Washington-based Tool Gauge manufactures precision metal and plastic components and assemblies for the aerospace industry.
Composite materials consist of fibers—in the aerospace industry, they are typically glass, carbon or kevlar—suspended in a matrix of epoxy resin.
The concept of the digital twin in A&D was born in the 1970s, when NASA began employing full-scale virtual mock-ups of space capsules to forecast the performance of machines in outer space.
To a discrete manufacturer, process manufacturing is odd territory indeed. It’s a world in which textiles, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, plastics, and food and beverage are produced en masse.
If you ask any number of manufacturers exactly what they felt the first time they crashed a stationary machine tool or dropped portable measuring equipment, you’re bound to get a range of answers—though dread, terror and even nausea will almost certainly be on the list of responses.
With a single example, Ira Moskowitz makes the case for why the organization he leads may be critical for advancing manufacturing in the United States.
The company expands Xcelerator portfolio to use knowledge-based approach for defining MBD
While the manufacturing industry learns to deal with COVID-19, it is also undergoing seismic change from other critical issues. Four industry leaders take on these issues in a panel discussion titled, “How Smart Manufacturing is Disrupting the Supply Chain - Are You Prepared?”
Whether driven by the reduction of in-shop personnel due to layoffs or to maintain social distancing guidelines into the future, many machine shops will likely be re-evaluating ways to eliminate labor-intensive manual operations if they can be automated instead.