With user costs rising and automation still not at the optimum level in China, the best option for pulling small and medium enterprises along on the smart manufacturing journey is cloud technology, Huawei Technologies’ He Fred said here today at a conference titled Manufacturing in the Age of Experience.
Listen to this Smart Manufacturing magazine article: Pandemic makes case for more automation, robotics. Outbreak poised to prompt changes in the way manufacturers use automation.
A whole new layer of insight can be harvested inside factories with the data you already have, today. Companies are sometimes holding back from leveraging sensors and tools like AI and deep data analysis that would allow for it because of cultural gaps between, for example, IT and OT. Ownership issues can also be a problem if some are, say, building devices vs operating devices. Paul Boris, EVP at Praemo fights against using red herrings like security concerns inside the same factory to continue down the same old paths that limit performance. He understands how seductive risk avoidance can be. And he speaks frankly about this and other issues with Brett Brune, editor in chief of Smart Manufacturing magazine.
Blockchain, the distributed, encrypted, tamper-evident ledger platform that gave rise to Bitcoin, has birthed a new, foundational market concept to execute business transactions, Karim Lakhani, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, said as he led a panel talk on blockchain tech for supply chains at Automate 2019.
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.
In the U.S., we are not seeing any specific localized disruption yet, although I’m watching New Jersey where it could be on the cusp. There are a lot of manufacturing facilities there in pharmaceuticals and chemicals, and therefore that’s an area I think we should be paying attention to.
Chandra Brown, who is set to become the executive director of the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII) here on Sept. 26, plans to “build on the good work already started there,” she said yesterday.
How do manufacturers love additive manufacturing (AM)? Bianca Lankford, a mechanical engineer at Northrop Grumman, can count the ways: antennas, brackets, clamps, coldplates, ducts, plenums and test fixtures.
Pivot International is a 47-year-old company. We’ve done product development and we manufacture as a service provider. We’re in a large degree of industries of technology.
Technological gains, young ambassadors, apprenticeships help. But manufacturers’ training investment remains a problem.
