The pace of technology today is rapid, with the potential to transform manufacturing. Digitization, automation, and connectivity are opening many new doors on the production floor.
Factory safety is not a theoretical issue for Gabe Glynn, CEO of the wearable tech firm MākuSafe.
This is a digest of news items focusing on how manufacturers are aiding the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
General Motors Co.’s quarterly profit plunged as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pared demand and caused the automaker to close factories.
Companies most likely to succeed in capitalizing on those opportunities will excel in digital transformation, among other things, according to the April 9 webinar “Market Impact of COVID-19: How to Respond, Reset, and Rebound,” by Aroop Zutshi and Mark Simoncelli of Frost & Sullivan Industry and Strategy Experts.
Constant refinement of medical machining from tooling design to finished product requires not only the ability to handle a broad range of plastic and metal materials but also to achieve predictable results—particularly in the face of strict regulations.
Basic trends in modern manufacturing are driving growth in 3D optical metrology. “One is the highly complex and high-tech material that manufacturers are using today. For example, in the aerospace turbine blade market, they simply cannot touch the part like they used to—the surface finish of the material is too readily affected by any kind of contact metrology."
Burrs, sharp edges, and rough surfaces plague even the most precise metal-cutting or forming process. Deburring and finishing can often be treated as the step-child of a manufacturing process, but its importance is growing as tolerances get tighter and precision devices become the norm.
I traveled to Toyota headquarters in Japan with Jeff Liker for a research project. We wanted to learn more about the engineering and collaboration that created the Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA), the strategy and innovation behind hydrogen vehicles, and how they had adapted and improved their development system to meet the increasing demands of the ultra-competitive global auto industry.
Until the middle of 2010, first-tier subcontract machinist, JJ Churchill, could produce turbine blades only if they had their fir-tree root-forms preground elsewhere, or if they were subsequently added by another subcontractor. No longer is this the case.
