What is Downtime in Manufacturing and How Much is it Really Costing You?

Downtime in manufacturing has always been touted as the “big bad” for the industrial sector. Downtime is lost productivity, lost business, and lost profit after all. This disdain for any sort of downtime in manufacturing is what’s spurred on movements such as the fourth industrial revolution. By…


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Looking for Trustworthy Industrial Equipment Manufacturers? Ask These Questions

Integrating new machinery in the factory floor can be an exciting endeavor. With each new addition of industry 4.0 hardware such as an industrial grade computer or IoT software comes promises of optimization, increased efficiency, and even more increased profits.  However, it goes without saying…


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10 Ways to Reduce Manufacturing Overhead Costs

Manufacturers have been receiving mixed signals as of late. On the one hand, manufacturing has seen a slow rise in activity but, available talent and labor has been dwindling. On one end of the spectrum, peak season and holidays promise increased production but, on the other end, we’re already…


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How Industry 4.0 Will Address the Manufacturing Talent Shortage

There’s been a rather peculiar, seemingly contradictory, trend coming out of the manufacturing industry the last few months. According to a report by the Institute for Supply Chain Management, manufacturing activity rose up to 56% in August, jumping up nearly 2% from numbers recorded in July. Even…


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Why is On Demand Manufacturing Suddenly Being Talked About?

Earlier in 2020, when the COVID pandemic was still in its infancy, manufacturing experienced one of its most prolific and high-profile stories ever. In response to lightning quick reduction in supplies such as PPE and ventilators, several manufacturers answered the call by leveraging their plants…


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Defining Lean Manufacturing, Its Core Principles, and Recommended Tools

Manufacturing has always been infatuated with creating as much as it can with as little as possible. The less resources, time, and confusing processes involved in creating a product, the less money wasted and the more optimized the operation. And while this is surely true in many regards,…


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Do You Really Need Industrial Internet of Things? Defining Value in Smart Manufacturing

The outcry and advocating for industrial internet of things has been anything but quiet these past few years. Slowly, with the introduction of sensors capable of gathering machine diagnostics and the industrial grade computers designed to house that data and craft actionable insight, Industry 4.0…


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Collaborative Robots in Manufacturing and How to Dip Your Toe into Automation

For all the huffing and puffing about how important industrial automation is, it can be rather hard for smaller plants to break into when you consider all of the moving parts needed- IoT devices, tailored industrial PCs, required software, not to mention more advanced, sophisticated solutions like…


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Quality 4.0 and the New Technology in Quality Control

Though it may be hard to believe, given the manufacturing industry’s propensity for high-tech automation and fancy machinery such as IoT hardware, AR, and admittedly effective Industrial Grade PCs, the sector has a pretty notorious issue with quality control and quality management. In fact, in a…


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Understanding Supply Chain Resilience: 3 Questions to Ask

Supply chains have experienced a shocking amount of change in the past few months. With several of them incorporating new infrastructures and hardware like industrial grade computers to address concerns ranging from manufacturing employee safety to supply chain preparedness and everything…


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