The shift to a new calendar year will bring more retirement announcements and a new crop of young, hungry workers to the manufacturing industry. As the workforce continues to get younger, it will become more and more important for business management to invest in new ways to instill pride and happiness in their workers. Beyond…
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You have a good maintenance program in place. It’s thorough and proven effective through your KPIs, while remaining consistent, well-tracked, and easily adapted if need be. But you think it can be even better. How do you make a great thing even better, without accidentally introducing inefficiency? Simple: Tweak the peripherals without disturbing the approach….
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Hopefully, you are one of the manufacturers who was the beneficiary of significant growth in 2018. But whether you saw big gains or small ones, you may be wondering what this manufacturing growth will mean for 2019. What does the future of manufacturing hold? Will growth continue to rise, or will things level off or…
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The push for Industry 4.0 isn’t slowing down. Manufacturers that can’t or won’t adapt are being displaced by those that will. This has driven many companies to dip their toe into the industrial internet of things (IIoT). The best place to start? A cloud-based maintenance system is proving to be a good entry point. It…
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Measuring the effectiveness of a maintenance program is about quantifying important variables such as machine efficiency and reliability. Deducing these variables means diving even deeper and measuring the systematic performance of a machine. For this, manufacturers must investigate the “six big losses.” A quick look at TPM The six big losses are unique issues within…
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Hydraulic or pneumatic? When it comes to your mechanical systems, you often have the choice of whether to opt for hydraulic systems, which are liquid-based, or pneumatic systems, which are gas-based. Which is right for you and your business? Does it really make a difference what kind of system you use? Whether you’ll prefer a…
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If your servo motors aren’t working properly, you may not need to have them repaired or replaced. The problem could be a cleaning issue. For example, material worn off the potentiometer may mix with grease, causing it to become conductive and disrupt the signal that tells the servo motor how to change position. A simple…
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2018 saw plenty of new trends in manufacturing, from additive manufacturing and automation to creative training techniques to bridge the skills gap. What sort of trends might we see in manufacturing in 2019? Below are a few possibilities. More Artificial Intelligence This likely won’t come through an increase in the number of…
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The industrial internet of things (IIoT) has exploded in potential over the past five years. Today, new innovations are giving rise to smarter factory technology that’s enabling everything from predictive maintenance to data-driven operational shifts. But the tech landscape is still murky, with both established giants and new startups vying for manufacturers’ attention. Getting to…
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Gone are the days of hefty instruction manuals and multi-day training seminars. Now training happens via the cloud, with multimedia modules, informative video, and interactive components. But even this is set to change according to a new poll conducted on employee learning preferences. Today’s training needs to be visually engaging and much shorter, according to…
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