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Today, an iPhone has more than 100,000 times the processing power of the computer that took Neil Armstrong to the moon in Apollo 11 – and the size and capabilities of today’s computer boards are making an even more monumental change in how we manufacture. All this technology gives manufacturers the capability to operate, as stated in The Six Million Dollar Man, “better, stronger, faster.” Christoph Berlin, Partner Program Manager at Microsoft sat down with Associate Editor Chris Mahar to talk about smart manufacturing and Microsoft’s Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) vision.

As manufacturers continue to see demand for tighter tolerances and less waste, new solutions are needed to solve challenges. Dave O’Neil, Vice President of SME Media, sits down with Patrick Cratty, Assistant Product Manager and Richard Bevers, Southern District Manager for BIG Kaiser Precision Tooling, to talk about new technology and products. Hitting upon how digital technology and advanced workholding designs are improving machining and eliminating persistent manufacturing issues.

ECi services a multitude of industries, but we presently have four products that service manufacturing and what FABTECH attendees would be focused on: these include Macola, Max, JobBoss, and M1, which is the product I represent.

The devices quickly become less costly, sophisticated and independent, gaining wider influence.

While cameras and motion control have worked in tandem for at least 15 years, their integration has improved because networks have gotten faster, more reliable, and more deterministic (i.e., nothing will interfere with a function that’s a priority).

A team of researchers from UC Berkeley, led by Pieter Abbeel, is working on the creation of smart robots that are teachable and can learn new skills without pre-programming. Abbeel and his team also formed a startup called Embodied Intelligence with the aim of developing artificial intelligence (AI) software to enable robots to learn from humans to perform complex tasks.

Manufacturers continue to be bombarded with an onslaught of technology terms, as well as different ideas on where to begin and how to proceed. This confusion has slowed the adoption of new technology. Yet a big opportunity for a huge increase in efficiency awaits.

In today’s booming software landscape, you see highly dynamic teams quickly iterating to develop and improve their products. Yet while the world’s software creators have learned to “move fast and break things,” hardware developers are still (slowly) moving to adopt a more agile product development methodology.

It’s a familiar scenario at the factory. Quality issues have reared their ugly heads, requiring rework, causing backorders, delaying shipments, and driving tense daily customer calls. Meanwhile, the team works to address production issues using a mix of day-old post-mortem reports, shop-floor observations captured on notepads, and other operational data summarized on spreadsheets and sticky notes.

For many years, the knowledge economy and traditional industries like manufacturing appeared to be on parallel tracks. Now those tracks are converging.