After a full week of news, Manufacturing’s Winner & Loser of the Week have been decided. The winning title goes to a company for inventing a product that will benefit the manufacturing community, while the loser was forced to issue a recall of their product due to safety concerns.
Winner
Manufacturing’s Winner of the Week is Rethink Robotics and their new robot, Sawyer. The Boston-based robotics company released Sawyer on Thursday, as the newest edition to the company’s robotic line designed to make factories safer and more efficient.
According to Time Magazine, Sawyer weighs in at 41.9 pounds and is 3.3 feet tall and “was created to automate more detailed, smaller tasks, like testing circuit boards and machine tending — jobs that have traditionally proven to intricate for industrial robots.”
Prior to Sawyer, the company produced Baxter in 2012. However, Baxter was designed for more heavy duty tasks. “[Baxter] gave us a tremendous base of companies that were thinking like us. We have a vision, idea and experience, but we don’t necessarily have all the answers,'” said Rethink CMO Jim Lawton. This resulted in the new robotics design and Sawyer.
To meet Sawyer, check out the video below:
Loser
Kraft Foods steals the losing title this week after they recalled 6.5 million boxes of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese because some of the boxes contained pieces of metal.
The recall covers 242,000 cases of Macaroni & Cheese, and is targeted at 7.25 ounce boxes sold individually or in packs of three, four and five that are marked with “best when used by” dates from September 2015 to October 2015.
According to Kraft, there have been eight complaints from consumers indicating they found small metal pieces in the boxes, however, there have not been any injuries. Kraft also indicated if consumers find metal in their Macaroni & Cheese they should return it to the store in which they bought it to receive a full refund.
