Smart Manufacturing Blog

Welcome to your source for all things smart manufacturing. Whether you’re looking for expert insights, hard data, or actionable tips for your plant floor, we’ve got you covered every week of the year.

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How to Double the Size of Your Business While Cutting Scrap

Lori Zoellner October 24, 2019

f you’ve noticed the sheer number of electric vehicles on the road today, you can imagine how quickly manufacturers within this industry are growing. One company in particular, Eurotranciatura Mexico recently doubled the size of its business in just a two-year period. ...

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Will Jobs Be Lost to Automation?

Anurag Garg October 22, 2019

Product and technology innovation has transformed life as we know it in the last few decades, and the pace of change is only getting faster over the next decade. Inventors and innovators continue to look for ways to make life easier, automate repetitive tasks, and remove the likelihood of human error by teaching machines to do what humans would otherwise do. ...

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How Great Expectations Are Driving Tech Adoption and Auto Supplier Success

Lori Zoellner October 17, 2019

The automotive industry is changing by the minute. New regulations, new markets, new product-line focuses, new consumer demands. Amid this rapid evolution, automotive supply chain is up against a growing number of daily challenges to achieve a single, yet very layered goal: meet and exceed the expectations of some of the world’s biggest brands....

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3 Reasons Why Real-Time Information Matters to Manufacturers

Stu Johnson October 15, 2019

In order to make timely decisions, you need access to timely data. Unfortunately, for many manufacturers, the shop floor is a black box that is disconnected from the enterprise systems they rely on, so they must depend on reports. Those reports may take hours to prepare by specialists after manually being entered into a system from the paper that originally collected the data. The result is that…

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Capacity Planning: A Critical Element of the Production Process

Stu Johnson October 8, 2019

Imagine this: You’ve won the big contract. You’ve dotted every i, crossed every t, and the paperwork is freshly signed and initialed. Yet, despite your efforts to check capacity before negotiations began, by the time you’re able to start the job new orders have rolled in, and your timeline is now at risk....

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Manufacturers: Unlock the Value of Industry Analysts

Susie Foran October 3, 2019

At a time when technology buyers are bombarded with software options from all angles, it can be difficult to determine which ones are legit and which ones you should avoid when you’re trying to select an ERP, MES, or Industrial IoT solution vendor....

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How to Optimize your Manufacturing Workforce

Stu Johnson October 1, 2019

It is increasingly challenging to stand up a workforce of skilled operators, but by automating error-prone tasks and operationalizing your procedures, you can mitigate the risk to production and the business. Easy-to-use tools with built-in error-proofing make it easy for your workforce to do the right thing—because it’s the easy thing to do....

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How to Leverage Automation in Your Manufacturing Process

Stu Johnson September 24, 2019

Management thinker Peter Drucker is often quoted as saying that “you can't manage what you can't measure.” In a manufacturing environment, this sage management advise can quickly feel impossible to achieve....

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3 Key Steps to Buying the Right ERP for Your Manufacturing Business

Dave Morfas September 18, 2019

We’re not going to dance around it: buying a new ERP solution for your manufacturing business is a big deal. It’s a long, involved process. It requires buy-in from a diverse group of stakeholders. It involves a major investment (both in time and money). And you’ll have to live with the results for perhaps a decade or more....

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Quality 4.0 and the Industrial IoT

Stu Johnson September 5, 2019

Quality is one of the top concerns of most manufacturers. End customers demand quality products so OEMs demand quality performance all the way down their supply chains. There’s no tolerance for delivering anything but a quality product....

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