The Management Briefing Seminars, organized by the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) in Ann Arbor, MI, is a summer tradition in the auto industry. Professionals gather outside of the northwest Michigan resort town of Traverse City to examine industry issues.
Manufacturers need to embrace artificial intelligence to make their operations more efficient, a consultant said.
Consumer expectations have shifted to almost unrecognizable levels, catalyzed by innovative tech companies like Amazon, Lyft and Netflix. Previously acceptable levels of customer service are no longer good enough. Customers now expect real-time support and answers to complex questions at the ready, at a minimum.
For plant managers, being able to see and act on data is key. It holds the secrets to new product introduction velocity, real-time and dynamic optimization, and productivity stats at the worker level. To help plant managers tap into that data, Cisco is introducing three new solutions to the Connected Factory portfolio.
Within a month of the presidential election in November, the National Council For Advanced Manufacturing (NACFAM) and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) came out with policy recommendations for the burgeoning Trump administration.
Smarter factory systems connected via the cloud are the grand vision offered for the future factories that will fully leverage the best available tools from automation, software and machine tool builders.
The issues around OEE are not its utility but the ease and credibility of the data used to calculate it
“We expect to see the world machinery market grow in the next five years,” said Arun Kumar a director at AlixPartners in a discussion he and I had recently.
Digitization of industry has become an established global trend. Despite all the enthusiasm of visionaries, the machine tool is, was and will remain the core element in production.
As the Fourth of July drew to a close, Nanocomp Technologies employees were glued to a live newsfeed from JPL/NASA.