Manufacturing.net Blogs

Manufacturing Gangnam Style

alawrence — Tue, 21 May 2013 18:08:01 +0000

Rethink Robotics, the firm that designed and manufactured Baxter the famous industrial robot, has met its match.

Campylobacter On The Rise

alawrence — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:37:59 +0000

This column originally ran in the May 2013 issue of Food Manufacturing.

Smartphone Shakes

alawrence — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 18:33:04 +0000

I never thought losing my smartphone to the porcelain god would give me withdrawals.

Technology Is Not The Problem — It Is The Solution

jhans — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:57:49 +0000

A long list of pundits are blaming our high tech society for America’s sustained unemployment with the Associated Press, Recession, Tech Kill Middle-class Jobs

How Clouds Can Dominate Sunny Florida

alawrence — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:11:34 +0000

I recently returned from a several days-long tech convention in Florida where nearly 6,000 Infor customers rapped on everything mobile, social and overall product innovation. It’s not always easy to get a room full of people excited about IT, but Inforum 2013 succeeded in doing so. But it wouldn’t be a conference on enterprise solutions if there weren’t cloud cover—and Infor has a few new cloud initiatives with big ramifications for manufacturers, including a partnership with IBM and a new big data solution called Sky Vault.

Welcoming Grandma Into Our Virtual Future

jhans — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:57:40 +0000

A virtual reality (VR) headset by the name of Oculus Rift made a big splash on Kickstarter, raising a stellar $2.43 million to get development kits into the hands and on the noggins of game developers. And now that the units have started to ship, people in the gaming community are getting treated to video after video of people wearing the goggles and trying to explain just how floored they are at the level of realism and immersion.

Taking Manufacturing To School

alawrence — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:36:31 +0000

As manufacturing processes become more automated, it is essential for companies to invest in partnerships with local technical schools to maintain a qualified, knowledgeable workforce.

Please Turn Out The Lights

alawrence — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 01:42:15 +0000

This column originally ran in the April 2013 issue of Food Manufacturing.

Who’s The Fool? – Profound Discoveries Or Elaborate Pranks

alawrence — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 23:49:32 +0000

We all know the old adage that surrounds the first day of April. We’ve all taken part in or fallen victim to an April Fools prank at some point. In the contemporary realm, April Fools has taken on an entirely different persona.

Advanced Manufacturing: GE’s Response To Full Employment

jhans — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:47:08 +0000

When Tom Donilon, the National Security Advisor for President Obama was asked what the two most pressing issues that kept him up at night, he replied, terrorist attacks and the US declining national competitiveness. The backdrop of 600,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs at a time when unemployment is near 8 percent has most certainly been his nightmare in the making. He must be asking himself, how could our educational system fall so out of line with industry demands, especially when student debts have exceeded $1 trillion?