An Israeli company has developed new artificial intelligence technology that promises to dramatically change how original equipment manufacturers and their suppliers conduct quality control inspections.
Heidenhain Corp. has opened its newly completed West Coast headquarters. This includes the expansion of its executive, sales and technical support offices, as well as demo facilities in San Jose, Calif. The company also maintains a Midwest headquarters in Schaumburg, Illinois.
Manufacturing’s supply chain is approaching a “tipping point” of diversifying beyond China, consulting firm PwC said in a report.
When designers at Siemens started using virtual reality (VR) to quickly evaluate early-stage ideas, the usually slow and costly design-and-iteration process went from days and hours to minutes.
The pace of technology today is rapid, with the potential to transform manufacturing. Digitization, automation, and connectivity are opening many new doors on the production floor.
The institutes that make up Manufacturing USA need to move at the speed of business, considering that the endeavor represents the U.S. government’s biggest investment in the digitization of manufacturing to date.
Manufacturers who have deployed the digital or smart factory have put down their pencils, found new uses for their clipboards and closed their spreadsheet programs in favor of using real-time data gleaned from condition monitoring of their machinery.
Metrology-grade laser scanners are expanding their range of applications. New users are finding the main attractions of laser scanners—speed and ease of use. What prevented more widespread use in the past were laser scanners’ perceived tradeoffs. Using one usually meant sacrificing accuracy or working with noisy data.
Information technology and operations technology are unlikely candidates for a successful marriage. But to ensure that manufacturers thrive in the digital age, OT and IT must find ways to work together—or to at least, as on Tinder, swipe right to indicate interest.
I experienced the end of the Third Industrial Revolution as I began my career in manufacturing. Closed government and private networks gave way to an open network called the Internet.