- Apprenticeships – The Future of Trades in America - Apprenticeship in the United States has a long history. Records of apprentices working for masters in a trade go back as early as 1640. During that period of time it was common for the apprentice to live with the master and to be indentured to them for a long apprenticeship period. Room and board were… Continue Reading
- Design for Excellence (DFX) - In the journey to revenue and profit there are a couple of ways to look at the development of a new product or technology. Projected profit margins sometimes never seem to be big enough. In the early stages of designing a product, the anticipated earnings from such an endeavor can be quickly wiped away if… Continue Reading
- Machine Guarding: A Top Ten OSHA Citation Target - Machines used in manufacturing and for commercial purposes often present a risk to their users. OSHA takes a dim view of machines with inadequate guarding to protect injury to machine operators. In fact, machine guarding violations are one of the ten highest causes of OSHA citations. In 2015 there were a total of 2,295 violations… Continue Reading
- Code Standardization: How to develop and stick with your standard - Previously, I’ve written about our history with code standardization and Rockwell’s support of standardization with Add-On Instructions and Plant PAx. But how do you go about developing and following a standard in the first place? Standards are created over a period of time by experienced engineers; this could be over years with inputs from many… Continue Reading
- HALT! Who goes there? Industrial System Security - Password management gets more important as we access financial websites, corporate portals, and an ever-increasing number of cloud-based resources as part of our online activity. In addition to passwords, it is good to secure personal data such as Social Security numbers and other sensitive information that should be kept out of the wild from identity thieves. … Continue Reading
- A New Organic Peanut Butter Plant – Once Again - I attended a ribbon cutting on June 2 at Once Again Nut Butter. They dedicated their new organic peanut butter plant in Nunda, NY. It was a celebration of success in small town America and it represents part of the turnaround in manufacturing in the USA that all of us strive for. The American Dream Once… Continue Reading
- The Question We’re Most Often Asked - At Optimation, we talk about our being in the business of providing turnkey solutions to the manufacturing segment. People that are new to our company observe that our website shows we service a wide variety of market segments, and within a segment, we offer a broad range of disciplines and skills. These prospective customers, sometimes… Continue Reading
- The Many Applications of Additive Manufacturing - Additive Manufacturing (AM) remains a hot topic, offering tremendous benefits to manufacturers, especially for complex parts. Inroads are being made in newer and more sophisticated applications than previously thought possible by most users. 3-D printing was the domain of small plastic parts, rapid prototyping, and some rapid tooling. Now the technology offers a very wide… Continue Reading
- Rockwell’s Support of Code Standardization: Add-on Instructions and PlantPAx - One of the most useful features of Rockwell’s RSLogix 5000 is the capability to create and leverage Add-On Instructions. A programmer can define one instruction that contains a specific set of instructions, thereby encapsulating a specific function or algorithm. Add-On instructions can be used to create new instructions for sets of commonly-used logic, providing a… Continue Reading
- Grants To Support Manufacturing In The USA - Most of the manufacturing grants we hear about are from the federal government or state governments. These grants may be in the form of tax credits or tax breaks, and most of them come with lots of strings attached. Most of the time they require the creation of jobs. If the manufacturer misses their target,… Continue Reading
