As of Wednesday, Aug. 16, the American Manufacturing Council is no longer active: President Donald J. Trump disbanded the Council and the Strategic and Policy Forum on the same day members of the Council had a conference call to discuss what to do in the aftermath of his remarks about the violence that erupted in Charlottesville, VA., during a “unite the right” rally last weekend.
Manufacturers face a difficult task juggling the current “innovation agenda.” Today, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), robotic automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are all poised to be the next big thing.
Conrad Leiva, vice president for product strategy and alliance at iBASEt and chair of the smart manufacturing working group at MESA International, speaks with Smart Manufacturing magazine Editor in Chief Brett Brune.
Steve Pollack had just about reached early retirement age when longtime friend and colleague Joe DeSimone asked him to join Carbon, his startup 3D printing company.
The Heller Group has its own way of doing things. This doesn’t mean the German machine tool company is a maverick. Rather, it gathers the facts of a situation and draws up a business plan that may or may not resemble what its competitors are doing.
Adam Hansel, chief systems and sales officer, DMG Mori (Hoffman Estates, IL) sums it up perfectly: “Go into any shop. Ask them if they want to automate. The answer is yes. 100%.”
Methods Machine Tools Inc. (Sudbury, MA), a leading supplier of precision machine tools, 3D printing technology and automation, recently introduced an automation cell designed to greatly boost 3D manufacturing throughput.
Mazak Corp. (Florence, KY) continues its steady advance toward the complete factory digitization of all its manufacturing operations with the recent transformation of its Oguchi, Japan, facility into yet another Mazak iSMART Factory.
Major Tool & Machine (MTM; Indianapolis) faced a challenge when it decided to rebuild its Schiess FZG6 (DSI) gantry mill in order to machine complex, high-precision large parts utilizing current absolute linear scale technology from Heidenhain Corp. (Schaumburg, IL).
Unplanned downtime and production loss due to equipment failure is one of the leading losses for manufacturers. Most shops perform maintenance on a fixed schedule or on failure. This means a machine will be maintained regardless of how often it is used and unexpected breakdowns will stop production.
