As the move toward a more connected manufacturing industry gains momentum and manufacturers start collecting factory-floor data, the need for fast, efficient data analysis becomes ever more critical.
Technological gains, young ambassadors, apprenticeships help. But manufacturers’ training investment remains a problem.
Cofounder Johannes Trabert, who lives a poetic life in the Thuringian Forest, says the future will be focused on ‘the clever share of work’ between humans and robots.
Several years ago, a global commercial vehicle maker asked my firm to develop a remote fleet management, health and performance portal that would open a new revenue stream.
The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) in 2016 showed unit sales figures in 2015 up 15% on the year before, reaching an all-time high of 253,748. Since 2010, technical improvements in robots and automation have turbocharged investment, according to the report.
According to CIMdata’s latest report, Mastercam is the No. 1 CAM software used worldwide. CIMdata also ranked Mastercam’s global support network as the largest in the field of CAM.
Universal Robots (UR, Odense, Denmark) was one of the pioneers of today’s modern field of collaborative robots (cobots) with the launch of the UR5 robot in 2008, however the company didn’t rest on its laurels at IMTS 2018 in Chicago.
What’s sexy? Try 3D printing, cobots, Yammer, VR, AR, blockchain technology
Not everything should be additively produced. But military training cockpits should. In the five years since the Advanced Manufacturing Center was first established at Lockheed Martin’s Training and Logistics plant in Orlando, FL, grown parts insertion on end-use applications has steadily grown.
If there’s one thing you can say without reservation about manufacturing today, it’s that everybody wants more automation and flexibility. With advanced 3D vision and a multiaxis robot, companies can now automate to a degree their executives only dreamt of a few years ago.
