Should you be concerned about your job in the aviation aftermarket? Will a robot be replacing you soon? People’s fascination with and fear about the potential of robots makes touting the technology an easy way for companies to grab headlines and burnish their innovation credentials.... Continue Reading
As its archrival proved with its failed Airbus A380 project, imitative, incremental innovation is a losing strategy, but assessing the market need for a new midrange aircraft involves a thorny set of questions. Boeing was right. About 20 years ago, the Chicago-based jet manufacturer and European... Continue Reading
Predictive maintenance is a topic that is heavily discussed in IIoT forums. However, there is a great deal of confusion as to where and how it applies to industrial networks. As its name implies, predictive maintenance is a prediction of early failure that guides your maintenance schedule and... Continue Reading
Spring has sprung at MTI, which has brought a lot of member activity with Chapter meetings in the Midwest and Canada, meeting of the MTI Technical Standards Committee, and the filming of footage for two new employee recruitment videos for the heat treat industry. MTI Chapter Meetings Members... Continue Reading
WITH STRONG GROWTH IN INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS, MANUFACTURERS OF END EFFECTORS AND OTHER COMPONENTS COULD SEE BIG GAINS. AT AUTOMOTIVE OEMS, INDUSTRIAL ROBOTS ARE WELDING AND PAINTING CARS. WITHIN WAREHOUSES, THEY ARE PUTTING STOCK ON SHELVES, PICKING OUT ITEMS FOR ORDERS, TRANSPORTING GOODS FROM... Continue Reading
Rushing into digital transformations can backfire. Companies that invest in digitizing operations can deliver efficiency gains of up to 15%–20% and spark supply chain innovation. Those benefits have prompted many companies to rush into a digital operations makeover. After all, no one... Continue Reading
Each month, over 130 MTI member heat treat plants input their monthly sales figure into a secure, private, password protected, online platform. This helps to provide them the key sales data, trends, and forecasts, ultimately allowing them to predict with precision a number of different critical... Continue Reading
Seven strategies to prevent loss and restore operations quickly. Natural disasters can seriously disrupt manufacturing operations. If your plant (or critical supplier) is crippled for weeks or months, your revenue, reputation, and shareholder value could hang in the balance. If your competitors... Continue Reading
Humans are often pegged as the weakest link in cybersecurity -- and to a great extent, that’s true. But in my experience, this axiom misses the bigger point: The reason it’s true is that most companies do not have effective access control. While training employees to think like... Continue Reading
THE INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS ALLOWS COMPANIES TO TAP INTO MORE DATA THAN EVER BEFORE. If you talk to anyone in manufacturing today about the future of the industry, you’re likely to hear a quizzical, “Do you mean Industry 4.0?” Industry 4.0 got its name from the Fourth... Continue Reading
Manufacturers are ready to invest in next-gen digital production. One of the primary elements in the transformation of the manufacturing plants is the changing nature of demand from the customers. There is sturdy economic impetus toward products that are high on precision, safe to use and safely... Continue Reading
"Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all." ~ Aristotle The culture of an organization is all about how people behave on a daily basis in their organization. Many times, company leaders put a set of values or behaviors on the wall for employees and visitors to see,... Continue Reading
