Thermoplastic composites are gaining traction in manufacturing applications, offering benefits like lighter weight, faster production times, longer shelf life and easier shipping compared with metals or other composites.
New systems, software and processes are replacing so-called islands of automation with seamless, automated manufacturing lines that boost overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) from 30 to 80% or more. Like a chess master, these systems think multiple moves ahead on the factory floor to ensure continuing production when circumstances change.
While cameras and motion control have worked in tandem for at least 15 years, their integration has improved because networks have gotten faster, more reliable, and more deterministic (i.e., nothing will interfere with a function that’s a priority).
A team of researchers from UC Berkeley, led by Pieter Abbeel, is working on the creation of smart robots that are teachable and can learn new skills without pre-programming. Abbeel and his team also formed a startup called Embodied Intelligence with the aim of developing artificial intelligence (AI) software to enable robots to learn from humans to perform complex tasks.
In today’s booming software landscape, you see highly dynamic teams quickly iterating to develop and improve their products. Yet while the world’s software creators have learned to “move fast and break things,” hardware developers are still (slowly) moving to adopt a more agile product development methodology.
For many years, the knowledge economy and traditional industries like manufacturing appeared to be on parallel tracks. Now those tracks are converging.
Industry 4.0 is inevitable, and everyone is looking to find a way forward. But manufacturing leaders who focus only on the technology involved will be frustrated—because the new industrial revolution is just as much a culture and people thing as it is a technology thing.
As manufacturing becomes ever more complex, tools that assist workers with difficult or unfamiliar tasks are becoming critical to process efficiency and product quality. An explosion in the development of mobile, wearable, and augmented reality (AR) computing technologies has thus created a new world of possibilities for the manufacturing industry.
Manufacturers are accelerating use of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, according to a survey of 66 companies.
After years of hype, the digital factory—the comprehensive integration of data from development, production and suppliers via new hardware and software meant to increase efficiency—is gradually becoming a reality.