Manufacturing should expand in the first half of 2020, including increased revenue for companies, the Institute for Supply Management said this week in a semi-annual forecast.
Industrial robots are becoming easier to program, more versatile, more cost-effective, more accurate and more mobile. These changes are lowering barriers to entry, shortening return on investment and making robots a more practical investment.
Cloud technology presents manufacturers with opportunities to improve the flexibility, scalability and efficiency of their operations. Realizing these benefits will require more than simply doing a one-to-one transfer of current technology to cloud-based servers.
The second level of machining automation is here. It may not be at every shop or factory yet, but it’s coming.
What do you think of when you hear the word factory? Probably some huge space, with machines humming and personnel walking around with notepads in their hands.
Hybrid manufacturing—using one machine to perform both additive and conventional subtractive manufacturing processes—is gaining traction across manufacturing sectors, allowing companies to leverage the benefits of both.
The U.S. Army is working assiduously to flight-qualify engine parts it has redesigned using additive manufacturing (AM).
What is tribal knowledge and why should a company care? It is valuable, exclusive information stored only inside someone’s mind and communicated only verbally (if at all). The “someone” may have played an important role in an organization for decades and knows a thing or two that the company treasures yet cannot duplicate.
The value-add of blockchain for businesses is estimated to grow into the trillions by 2030. Experts believe product recalls alone—estimated to cost $8 million today—could be practically eliminated through improved track and traceability enabled by blockchain.
There is a lot of promise in the coming adoption of Model-Based Definition (MBD) in industry. MBD is the practice of attaching useful information to a 3D CAD model, such as tolerances or material properties. This should be especially good news for manufacturing engineers.