All Features
Sam Manzello
I’m a dragon wrangler. Although that might sound like something straight out of Harry Potter or Game of Thrones, this isn’t fantasy—it’s serious science.
As a fire researcher, or more colloquially, a dragon wrangler, my job is to help protect people and property from fire’s devastating effects.…
Eckel Industries
(Eckel: Cambridge, MA) -- Fanshawe College’s new Canadian Centre for Product Validation (CCPV) is a one-of-a-kind facility in Canada (one of only three in the world). The expansive 25,000 square-foot, two-story center houses ultramodern validation technologies for product prototyping and testing.…
Stanford News Service
For Melissa Valentine and her colleagues at Stanford, the future of work is here: “flash teams” of skilled professionals who have probably never met before and may work on different continents, but who can turn a napkin sketch into a product within days or weeks.
Valentine, assistant professor of…
NASA
(NASA: Washington, D.C.) -- NASA is working toward a greener future in aviation, where airplanes push back from the gate, taxi to the runway, and take off much quicker. A more efficient, precise trip by an airplane from the gate to takeoff reduces the amount of time its jet engines spend running…
Bruno Scibilia
Businesses are getting more and more data from existing and potential customers. Whenever we click on a website, for example, it can be recorded in the vendor’s database, and whenever we use electronic ID cards to access public transportation or other services, our movements across the city may be…
Knowledge at Wharton
I t wasn’t that long ago that GM ran commercials advertising that its Oldsmobile division didn’t just produce cars for your grandfather, but also for everyone else. It was an attempt to reinvent the brand’s staid image—and it didn’t work.
Now, the Oldsmobile division and its iconic vehicles are…
AAAS
As more coal-fired power plants are retired, industry workers are left without many options. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, though.
In a new study published in Energy Economics, researchers from Michigan Technological University and Oregon State University offer hope for coal workers…
CMSC
(CMSC: Weatherford, TX) -- The Coordinate Metrology Society (CMS) has announced the final schedule of events for its annual Coordinate Metrology Society Conference (CMSC) to be held July 25–29, 2016, at the Embassy Suites by Hilton in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The conference is world-renowned for…
Jon Speer
Design controls and risk management processes should be tools to ensure that medical devices are designed, developed, and manufactured to be safe and effective, and to address indications for use, too.
All too often, however, design controls and risk management are viewed as a pile of “stuff”…
“Honest feedback is hard to take, especially from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.”
—Franklin P. Jones
I once found myself needing to find new employment. The situation that I was leaving had been complex, to say the least, and I worried that perceptions of failure would dog…
Katherine Watts
The HORNE Healthcare team has been blogging recently about the necessary business model changes we think are inevitable to healthcare transformation. We’ve focused on the macro level, urging healthcare organizations to take action. Although I believe our advice is sound for large systems, I am…
3D Systems
Best described as “a museum of art being built,” the Polich Tallix Fine Art Foundry in Rock Tavern, NY, has helped artists develop and produce their work for nearly 50 years. Large-scale Frank Stella statues adorn the exterior of the premises, which is otherwise unassuming in all but scale. The…
Barbara A. Cleary
Approaching the end of the school year means focusing on graduation rates, dropout rates, and other data suggesting trends for students. Opportunities for considering statistics abound, but one must examine the way that these statistics are actually used by asking the right questions about the…
LaserLinc Inc.
(LaserLinc: Dayton, OH) -- LaserLinc Inc., a United States manufacturer of technology for precision measurement of diameter, ovality, wall thickness, concentricity, eccentricity, and inside diameter, is pleased to introduce the TLAser1240 scanning laser micrometer, a new single-axis diameter gauge…
Bruce Hamilton
Many moons ago, when I was just getting started on my lean journey, I visited a large automotive supplier to benchmark pull systems. My own factory had started a pilot kanban between two work centers and I was hoping to gain some insight from a more experienced source.
To my disappointment, when…
Marposs
(Marposs: Auburn Hills, MI) -- Marposs will introduce its latest generation Optoquick flexible, precision shop-floor shaft measuring system at IMTS 2016 in booths E-5516 and S-8719. The Optoquick system utilizes non-contact optical scanning to provide rapid and accurate measurements while the part…
Ken Levine
How do you determine the “worst case” scenario for a process? Is it by assuming the worst case for each process task or step? No. The reason is that the probability of every step having its worst case at the same time is practically zero. What we’re looking for is a value that will occur a very…
DeFelsko
(DeFelsko: Ogdensburg, NY) -- DeFelsko has introduced the new PosiTector SHD Shore Hardness Durometer for measuring the indentation hardness of non-metallic materials such as polymers, elastomers, and rubbers. In the corrosion industry, durometers are commonly used to ensure proper curing of…
Ken Voytek
In a recent post, I examined the differences in productivity across small and large manufacturing firms, and noted that there were differences across manufacturers in terms of size. But it’s also clear from the literature that productivity differs across companies even in the same industry.
Why…
MCMA
(MCMA: Ann Arbor, MI) -- The Motion Control and Motor Association (MCMA), the global trade association for the motion control and motor industry, recently announced that online registration is open for the annual Technical Conference (TechCon), which will be held October 11–13, 2016, in New…
Annette Franz
A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post about emotionally unavailable customers. Hat tip to James Lawther for inspiring me to actually flip the tables here and think about emotionally challenged employees, instead.
The question I posed in response to his comment on that post was: Why do we transform…
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
An improved titanium alloy—stronger than any commercial titanium alloy currently on the market—gets its strength from the novel way atoms are arranged to form a special nanostructure. For the first time, researchers have been able to see this alignment and then manipulate it to make the strongest…
Sunnen Products Co.
(Sunnen: St. Louis, MO) -- Sunnen’s new SVL-2115 automated lapping machine brings increased productivity and part consistency to what is traditionally a manual process. Based on the same machine platform as the SV-2100 honing system, the SVL-2115 provides single-setup processing of hydraulic…
Delcam
(Delcam: Birmingham, UK) -- Delcam, an Autodesk company since 2014, continues to improve its software to help companies whenever they need to increase productivity, reduce lead times, or improve quality and consistency.
Visitors to IMTS, held in Chicago Sept. 12–17, 2016, will see at booth E-3222…
Steve Melito
How competitive is American manufacturing? By the year 2020, the United States is projected to take the top spot in the Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index (GMCI), a multiyear research platform from Deloitte and the Council on Competitiveness.
The 2016 GMCI surveyed more than 500 of the…
