I just returned from IMTS in Chicago and my first thought was, “where will I be able to rack up all those bonus steps I got last week?” On the easiest day, I walked 7.9 miles, and I topped 10 miles on two other days. It’s easy to understand why.
Being a competitive player in the aerospace and defense industry is no small feat. In an industry in which you need to be accountable for every piece of an assembly, meeting customer expectations and requirements can be daunting tasks.
Some things are a given today. One is computing is cheap and powerful, and it is getting cheaper and more powerful. Another is the dropping price of industrial sensors. Combine this with easier ways of moving around data from those sensors and you get lots of data: Terabytes of data.
A decade removed from the Great Recession, the U.S. job market is thriving. Because employers are struggling to fill empty positions, they must explore other ways to increase production needs.
Smart sensors, already an integral feature of many manufacturing plants that are integrating IT and OT, are now making their way into the supply chain where they monitor reliability and shipping conditions, improve predictive maintenance and make just-in-time delivery (the innovation from the 1980s) easier.
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 low temperature intrinsic to solid-state printing processes allows manufacturers to weld layers of dissimilar metals without fear of metallurgical incompatibility issues.
Additive manufacturing (AM) refers to processes used to make a three-dimension object layer-by-layer. The shape of each layer can be dynamically controlled by computer-aided design (CAD).
Within manufacturing, a shift has begun to extend big data analytics and condition monitoring beyond the factory door to both ends of the supply chain—to customers, other end users and to second-and third-tier suppliers.
Most manufacturers have relied on third-party vendors to make parts that are then incorporated into the final product. From automakers sourcing stereos and aircraft makers contracting for jet engines to a small bakery ordering plastic bags or a woodshop buying nails, producers of all types have supplemented their internal capabilities through a painstakingly developed supply chain of external vendors.