Shop ERP Software Boosts Efficiency June 26, 2019 Speeding the flow of jobs through the shop, while maintaining top quality, ranks among the hallmarks of any successful manufacturing operation’s goals.
Control Software Improvements Spurring Manufacturing’s Digitization Push May 15, 2019 More and more manufacturers are seeing productivity as a crucial factor to their business success. In the meantime, business models are changing from the large quantities and few variants to small quantities with frequently changed variants. This change requires high flexibility during production.
Keeping Machines Honest with Advanced Calibration, Optimization June 3, 2019 There’s nothing mysterious about the need for calibration. As Michael Wilm, business manager for calibration products, Renishaw Inc., West Dundee, Illinois, put it: “When you get gas for your car, you count on the pump being calibrated. That’s why we calibrate machine tools. If you don’t calibrate a machine tool you have no idea it’s going to give you reliable service for manufacturing your product.”
ZEISS Completes Steel Construction of New Facility in Michigan June 13, 2019 With the Steel Topping Out event, ZEISS has completed the steel portion of its state-of-the-art site near Detroit. The new facility for the Industrial Quality and Research (IQR) segment of ZEISS, represented in the USA by Carl Zeiss Industrial Metrology, LLC, is scheduled to be complete in June 2020 and will consolidate four existing Michigan facilities into one location.
Metals Testing Requires Escalation-Based Strategy August 14, 2019 At Cary Rosenberg’s company, Watts Water Technologies, validating material properties to ensure they are composed of the correct elemental composition is an important part of their work.
Automation and AI Bring Future Closer Than Ever August 13, 2019 As a self-aware millennial, Pat Evans has long been wary of how quickly technology is taking over our lives and quickly dominating the economy. Attending HxGN Live in June, Hexagon AB’s annual digital solutions conference, some of those fears were reinforced, while others were quelled.
AM, Spare Parts, and the Rise of the Micro Factory March 8, 2019 Manufacturing got smart when companies figured out how to make products in one market and sell them in another. Today, we call this supply chain logistics. But somewhere along the way, the innovation chain connecting supply (manufacturing) and logistics (the supporting infrastructure) started to diverge.
Process Reliability: The Springboard to Efficiency March 6, 2018 I’m among the first to dive into the latest manufacturing innovations and see how they can improve our customers’ operations. Yet, I’m also among the first to advise them to pause and ensure that the fundamentals of their manufacturing processes are in place before adding something new into the complex mix of functionality and desired outcomes.
Metrology Tools for Medical: A New Focus on Vision Systems November 6, 2017 Metrology for medical devices needs to become more capable as those devices get more varied and complex. Manufacturers must inspect dental implants, coronary stents, orthopedic joints, and implanted electronic devices. Surgeons are increasingly using intricate, sometimes one-off, surgical tools. There is also a growing number of consumable items, such as hypodermic needles, made on rapid production lines. They all need ever more precise quality control.
Chrysler Implements Flexible Manufacturing June 6, 2016 Challenged by an increasingly niche-oriented automotive market, The Chrysler Group (Auburn Hills, MI) must increase the number of models it offers while decreasing its capital investment. The company plans to offer 50% more models in 2009 compared to 2004, according to John Felice, VP of manufacturing, technology and global enterprise for Chrysler.