MHI Blog -- As additive manufacturing (3D printing) has matured, the benefits for commercial and industrial applications are becoming more recognizable. Forward thinking companies are leveraging the technology to gain a competitive edge.
Direct digital manufacturing (DDM) is a process that employs additive technology to produce end-use items. Directly from CAD data, components are manufactured without molding, casting or machining. By utilizing automation, DDM is taking additive manufacturing to the next level.
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Bloomberg Business -- Amazon.com Inc.’s inaugural "Amazon Picking Challenge" inspired mechanical engineering and computer science students from around the world to design robots that can grab boxes of Oreo cookies and pencils from warehouse shelves and place them in bins, tasks ordinarily done by people.
The Seattle retailer hopes to make its challenge a regular event that encourages innovation in robotics and steers academic research toward e-commerce automation.
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EBN -- Autonomous driving is a hot and it will only get hotter, as suppliers and their OEM customers rush to offer automatic pilot features that should eventually be available in mainstream cars in just a few years.
Demand for autonomous driving is also trickling down the supply chain for systems and components that allow cars to drive and brake without human interaction.
As a testament of the growth potential for suppliers; sales of laser, infrared, radar, image, and ultrasonic sensors, which represent essential components for autonomous driving, will skyrocket from $742 million worldwide this year to $1.1 billion in 2020, according to IHS Automotive.
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The Wall Street Journal -- Today’s digital factories have many more computers on the shop floor than pieces of heavy equipment. So despite pervasive misconceptions, today’s shop floor is not your grandfather’s factory. Advanced manufacturing facilities are software and data-driven, and require a highly-skilled workforce that is proficient in technology, engineering and math.
Manufacturing is an industry with tremendous potential in the U.S., and the question for many manufacturers is whether they will move past the old ways of operating and embrace digital manufacturing.
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MHI Blog -- When the Fukushima disaster rocked Japan in 2011, it created a serious disruption to the global supply chains of electronics, automobile and other major industries. Where should you focus your risk management efforts to avoid this kind of disruption?
The recently released 2015 FM Global Resilience Index ranks the supply chain resilience of 130 countries and territories around the world. The index aggregates nine drivers of resilience into three factors—economic, risk quality and the supply chain itself.
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Industry Week -- Supply chains coordinate and balance people, activities and resources to make and move a product to deliver to customers. It involves the coordination and flow of goods, cash and information. Every company tries to balance and optimize their supply chain to improve profitability and better customer service. The Internet of Things (IoT) is enabling more and faster information across the supply chains for better decisions, planning and execution.
New market opportunities are available to companies in almost every industry from the data that IoT delivers. These new opportunities could be as simple as getting information from sensors about what is happening on the manufacturing plant floor causing automatic manufacturing updates, potential adjustment to customer order delivery dates or even a maintenance work request to handle a detected equipment malfunction. All of these opportunities cause changes to be made to the supply chain.
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Equipment World -- Transportation funding remains in limbo after a recent patch, and President Barack Obama is threatening to veto a $55 billion bill because it isn’t enough of an increase over current funding levels. According to The Hill, the White House said the president would veto the Republican bill if it made it to his desk. The administration said the THUD measure doesn’t provide enough funding for transportation or housing programs.
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Material Handling & Logistics -- If Jamaica’s Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce has his way, his country will take the logistic industry by storm and become the fourth node in the global logistic structure.
And as always, location is the key.
"Sitting at the doorway to the newly expanded Panama canal, Jamaica wants to position itself to join Rotterdam, Dubai and Singapore as the fourth node in the international logistics chain," explains. G. Anthony Hylton, MP, Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce.
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The Wall Street Journal -- Google Glass has so far bombed with consumers who wouldn’t accept its cybergeek styling. But smart glasses are getting a second look from companies with warehouses and factories where the practical applications could still catch on.
Google Glass and similar devices give workers hands-free access to computer-generated information in front of their eyes. Test programs under way at Boeing Co., Daimler AG, United Parcel Service Inc. and other companies show how smart glasses can reduce the need for manuals and printed instructions, eliminate production errors and cut steps from processes, resulting in improved productivity.
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MHI Blog -- Mike Rowe, from CNN’s Somebody’s Gotta Do It and formerly of Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs, will be a headliner at the MHI 2015 Executive Summit & Annual Conference, October 4-7 in Ponte Vedra, Florida.
The 2015 MHI Executive Summit will kick off this year’s event with a half-day of sessions followed by the Annual Conference. All sessions will focus on innovations that are transforming traditional supply chains into next generation models.
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Modern Materials Handling -- Last year, the Industrial Truck Association launched National Forklift Safety Day (NFSD) to widespread praise and participation. From open houses at local dealerships to productive meetings with congressmen in Washington, DC, the event successfully promoted the industry’s emphasis on safety, operator training and education. But even the event’s sponsors at the Industrial Truck Association (ITA) could not have anticipated the gusto with which stakeholders dove into the mix.
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Investors.com -- One week after being named the new chief executive of China's Internet giant Alibaba Group on May 7, Daniel Zhang put international markets at the top of the company's shopping list.
"We must absolutely globalize," Zhang said at a companywide meeting, as reported on Alibaba's news site Alizila.com. "We will organize a global team and adopt global thinking to manage the business, and achieve the goal of global buy and global sell," he said.
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Supply Chain Brain -- More than eight million building management systems (BMS) will be integrated with some form of Internet of Things (IoT) platform, application or service by 2020, according to an ABI Research report. However, like many suppliers in established markets today, commercial building management system vendors face both opportunities and threats when navigating the emerging IoT ecosystem.
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MHI’s new Career Forum enables manufacturing and supply chain professionals to view current job postings of MHI member companies. Go to http://www.mhi.org/careers to find the perfect opportunity for you.
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The Wall Street Journal -- Online shopping is driving more foot traffic to brick-and-mortar stores.
About a third of shoppers would prefer to have an item delivered to a location other than their home, up from 26% last year, and many of those are choosing to pick up their orders in stores, according to a survey of about 5,100 U.S. consumers released today by United Parcel Service Inc. and comScore Inc. About half of those surveyed have shipped an order to a store for pickup, and 45% of those shoppers bought something else while picking up the purchase.
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Food Safety News -- One requirement of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) is for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to develop a program to expedite food imports to the U.S. from importers with a proven food safety track record.
On Thursday, FDA published draft guidance for industry explaining how the new fee-based Voluntary Qualified Importer Program (VQIP) will work.
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CIO -- Retailers and their suppliers are under more pressure than ever before to deliver more goods to more destinations faster.
To stay competitive, "retailers need to know where things are at all times so they can redirect shipments, rebalance inventories and respond to new demands on the fly," says Rich Becks, general manager, Industry Value Chains, E2open, which delivers cloud-based supply chain collaboration solutions.
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Harvard Business Review -- A big challenge in today’s world of far-flung, complex supply chains is the limited understanding of the impact on your operations of unexpected disruption at one supplier’s site. To address this issue, my colleagues William Schmidt of Cornell, Yehua Wei of Duke, and I developed a method to help prioritize the financial or operational impact of risk that lets companies focus their mitigation efforts on the most important suppliers and risk areas. The method was implemented successfully at Ford Motor Company — an effort we described in this HBR article. But since then, we encountered an important problem: Suppliers tend to be optimistic about the information that they provide. In response, we have developed a remedy.
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