We have new heroes to follow. Crew Dragon and the Falcon 9 rocket launched Saturday May 30th, and the Lunar Optimized Starship and the Artemis program will be here in the near future!
Topics: Trends, Business, Education, Engineering
The Challenging Question We Often Face.
Recently, I was challenged by a friend, who is not associated with our business, if I could explain why one of our prospective clients why they would hire an outside design/build engineering firm.The client has the capability to produce products in their manufacturing plants, and would thus have a fair amount of in house capability. This is a very provocative question, and one which we are regularly challenged to answer. As I reflected on the varied reasons that support our business, I decided that rather than give my usual elevator speech, I would have a bit of fun with my answer. So, here are what we observe are the top ten reasons (in ascending order) why our clients do routinely ask us to participate, as viewed from their perspective:
Topics: Technology, Safety, Trends, Internet of Things, Machine Guarding, Engineering Services, IIoT, Operations, Engineering
Topics: Transit, Trends, Internet of Things, Energy, Engineering Services, IIoT
Data, Clouds & Oceans: Pressure Test System for Undersea Cable Components
For those of you who believe your data really resides in a cloud, I’m about to burst your bubble. Did you know that 99 percent of the data traffic that is crossing oceans is carried by undersea cables? Yep – that’s right. For those of you that think Amazon, Microsoft, Dell, Google, IBM, & Alibaba are the data traffic kings, think again (although they may help fund the majority of these cables).
Topics: Manufacturing, Technology, Safety, Trends, Equipment, Education, Pressure
The introduction of collaborative robots (cobots) in manufacturing has presented some unique safety challenges for production workers, engineers, managers, and safety professionals. In my opinion, cobots represent the ingenuity driven by continual process improvement for sustainable and safe work.
New York’s Manufacturing Legacy in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
I recently attended the New York State Manufacturing Conference in Troy, hosted by the CATS center at RPI. The focus of the conference was advancing technology and manufacturing in New York. I had the opportunity to be part of the conference and gave a talk titled, “Building on New York’s Manufacturing Legacy in the Fourth Industrial Revolution – Industry 4.0.” Industry 4.0 is an amazing step forward in technology and defines an exciting era for manufacturing which began just this decade.
Topics: Manufacturing, Trends, IIoT
New York’s Manufacturing Legacy and Its Manufacturing Future
I recently attended the New York State Manufacturing Conference hosted by the Center for Automation Technologies and Systems (CATS) center at Rensselaer. It was a spirted event attended by participants from a variety of individuals and companies whose primary focus was promoting and advancing technology and manufacturing in New York. Robots and cobots were everywhere. More than 70 organizations were represented from industry, academia, economic development and technology centers.
Topics: Manufacturing, Trends, Robotics, IIoT
Data Analytics Gives Manufacturing Plants Insights for Continuous Improvement
Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) promise to make more data and better analytic applications available for industry. Driven by high powered analytics, including machine learning and artificial intelligence engines, both promise operational benefits including lower costs through improved Key Performance Indicators (KPI), such as First Pass Yield, Non-Standard Downtime or Overall Equipment Effectiveness.
Topics: Manufacturing, Trends, Quality, Process Monitor, IIoT
Before we go any further into the new year, let’s take a look at what brought us here, starting with thinking about the mix of work that Optimation performed last year. And then let’s look at some of the other things going on in our world (not political).
Topics: About Optimation, Manufacturing, Trends
Conventional wisdom in many corners of industry may steer seekers of outside services such as systems integration (Optimation’s business) to those firms with direct exact and typically singular experience in a given field.
Topics: Technology, Trends, food industry