What is the “Yatai” Flexible Manufacturing System?

The age of manufacturing’s status quo has long since ended. A weakening labor pool (and increasingly more difficult bar of entry set the stage for that end) and 2020 look like the final nails in that coffin. Now the buzzwords like resiliency, visibility, and smart all describe one core principle of…


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A Practical Approach to Supply Chain Risk Management

2020 has passed and, to be honest, the entire year was essentially one big supply chain disruption. Everything that could have gone wrong, and many things that we didn’t even know could go wrong, did. Fortunately all these trials and tribulations, for all the chaos they caused, instilled in many…


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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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Ways to Improve Shipping Technology in Preparation for Peak Season 2020

In the freighting, manufacturing, and retail sectors, August through November/December is commonly referred to as “Peak Season.” It is during this chunk of time that shopping, orders, returns, and shipping increase to an alarming degree as the holiday season, and all of its shopping habits, begin…


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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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4 Pieces of Food Waste Tech Transforming Food and Beverage Manufacturing

Production and manufacturing has been in the midst of a slow and meticulous metamorphosis the past few years. As innovations continue to push more supply chain visibility, automation, and efficiency, fat continues to be trimmed and factory floors continue to be further and further optimized.…


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Connected Worker Platforms are Coming: Why Industrial Computers Will Be Essential

Industrial software and its versatility has been spurred on to grow for several reasons- Hype for Industry 4.0, changes in the workforce and the need to draw in younger workers, and even the recent pandemic have all pushed several to facilities to focus their efforts on automation, self-sufficient…


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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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How is the Automotive Industry Planning to Safely and Efficiently Resume Production?

UPDATE 11/05/2021: It has been eighteen months since we covered the automakers’ resumption of production in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic as we previously wrote about on June 2nd, 2020. The emergence and availability of the COVID-19 vaccine in December 2020 is the most notable change.  The…


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4 Ways Industrial Computers are Addressing the Coronavirus’ Effects on Manufacturing

We’ve covered before just how impactful the effects of COVID-19 have been across multiple industries, most notably the manufacturing sector. Several entire supply chains are shutting down across the globe and those that aren’t closing in their entirety are still suffering shutdowns in key areas of…


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