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Smart Manufacturing magazine Contributing Editor Karen Haywood Queen speaks with Sridhar Tayur about what supply chain players are learning from COVID-19. The Carnegie Mellon professor covers the roles AM and cobots are playing. He also looks at what manufacturers should consider doing to be prepared for the next hugely disruptive event.

With automakers turning out ventilators and protective face shields, brewers and distillers bottling hand sanitizer, and garment factories stitching up gowns and masks to fill a yawning gap in personal protective equipment for health care workers, the coronavirus pandemic is shining a million-watt spotlight on the critical role manufacturing plays in society.

Hitachi Powdered Metals (USA) Inc. began a gradual investment in industrial robots at their Greensburg, Ind. plant in 2005, driven by the emergence of a tightening labor market and the opportunity to produce an extremely fragile product.

Many organizations struggle with applying new technology in their manufacturing operations. SME conducted the Manufacturing Technology Harmonization Study to understand how companies approach this challenge of integrating smart manufacturing, big data, and both new and old capital equipment in a cost-effective and practical implementation.

Modern manufacturing is a data-driven endeavor. The sheer volume of data available to be collected and analyzed is staggering—and something that couldn’t have been envisioned even 20 years ago.

Like most of the digital architecture of manufacturing, computer numerical controllers (CNCs) have advanced rapidly in recent years, producing far more processing speed and implementing advanced algorithms, while at the same time offering simpler, more intuitive user interfaces.

As manufacturing undergoes the revolutionary changes of the Digital Age, the people with the keenest leadership skills have taken up the charge to modernize the industry so that it leverages the cloud and Big Data and is connected and smart.

Robots and job shops have not typically been talked about together. After all, everyone knows that automation is only suitable for high-volume production, and the typical mom-and-pop operation is anything but—its schedule filled with orders for high-mix, low-volume, and often highly complex work.

Edge. Cloud. Digital twin. AI. AR. VR. Cobots. Once they were buzzwords. Now, they are becoming technical realities in mid- to large-scale manufacturing plants in North America.

U.S. manufacturing in general, and small- and medium-sized manufacturers in particular, are in danger of being left behind as Europe and Asia move faster toward Industry 4.0, John Dyck, CEO of the Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII), told congressional staff, federal agency staff in a February briefing.