Operations

In high-volume manufacturing, inspection often struggles to keep pace with production. That challenge becomes even greater when the material itself is naturally variable and the defects aren’t always easy to define consistently. In one high-volume manufacturing environment producing about 20,000…

When manufacturing leaders discuss operational challenges, “culture” becomes the catch-all explanation: “Our culture doesn’t support discipline like Asian manufacturers,” or, “We need to change the culture around quality,” or, “It’s a cultural resistance to following procedures.”

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When fundamental particles are heavier or lighter than expected, physicists’ understanding of the universe can tip into the unknown. A particle that’s just beyond its predicted mass can unravel scientists’ assumptions about the forces that make up all of matter and space. But now, a new…

In a lot of plants, motion-control equipment stays in service far longer than anyone originally expected. Servo drives, spindle amplifiers, operator panels, encoder interfaces, and power supplies often keep running for years after the OEM has shifted its attention elsewhere.

That…

The way we think about our process will shape the way we collect, analyze, and interpret our data when things go wrong. This in turn will shape the actions taken and the results obtained. In this column, we look at an example of the difference between the traditional approach and an alternate…

There’s no shortage of AI in manufacturing. There is, however, a shortage of AI that works when things get complicated—AI that can move the needle.

If you spend any time in industrial service environments, where assets go down and the fix is buried in five different systems and 4,000…