Manufacturing Matters

"As much as we feel like the change is never ending right now, that's going to be the constant for the next couple of decades. We're going to have more options for how we increase productivity, how we collaborate with robots and each other, and how we build value. "

Right now, we are at such an incredible moment in history in terms of AI and robotics, and we’re just at the beginning of this journey, sug...

“From a fab perspective, you’re not only looking at submicron structures, but then some of these fiber interfaces may be centimeters. You have to be able to inspect and fabricate structures which vary in orders of magnitude.” 

Photonic integrated circuits (PICs), which use light instead of electricity to transmit and process data, will enable faster, more efficient communication critical for applications like data centers,...

"How can lessons learned as an Apache pilot in the military translate into aerospace engineering and the general world of manufacturing?"

Lead like a pilot means placing an importance on structure, guidance, and community, says Operation Lead’s Craig Coyle. A former Apache pilot, Coyle joined TECH B2B Marketing’s Jimmy Carroll on this episode of Manufacturing Matters to discuss this concept and its applicability ...

"With AI technology, anyone can be a programmer. If you have an idea, whether you can code or not, AI can write the RealSense code, and you can deploy an AI-enabled 3D camera for less than $100."

Walk any robotics show floor and chances are you will see RealSense cameras in many of the robots and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) on display, which made it surprising years ago when erroneous reports said that Intel was windin...

"Today, video AI agents exist that turn your existing cameras into AI teammates across a range of applications. If you can leverage this technology to make your assembly line operate 1% more efficiently, that can result in hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue in a year."

In this episode of the Manufacturing Matters podcast, Dunchadhn Lyons, Director of Engineering and Allison Lilly, Director Product Marketi...

Artificial intelligence has been around for many years, but the face of AI is continually changing. Today, by applying well-engineered AI to manufacturing toolsets, we can get closed-loop control and automation that has more humanlike characteristics than ever before. For this episode of Manufacturing Matters, TECH B2B Marketing’s Winn Hardin and Aaron Hand caught up with Kence Anderson, founder and CEO of Composabl, at Automate 20...

"Manufacturers and businesses of all types must always be ready to pivot, whether it means dealing with tariffs and geopolitical strife, labor shortage, supply chain issues, or other disruptions, everyone must be ready to pivot. Indeed, it’s a dance."

When tariffs were first announced, many businesses, including systems integration company Creative Automation, already had containers full of parts and equipment on...

Katana Cloud Inventory powers inventory and manufacturing workflows for 1500+ small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and routinely tracks over $300 million in monthly procurement data. That gives Katana a unique near-real-time window on the shifting interplay between unit costs, inventory and market demand in sectors like manufacturing. 

In this episode of “Manufacturing Matters,” TECH B2B Marketing’s Aaron Hand and Dan McCarthy i...

"We’re on a mission to build climate resilient homes for all…leveraging the latest robotics and automation technologies."
 
Construction costs have doubled in the last decade, and we have a shortage of skilled workers to build them anyway. In addition, climate events are getting more severe, so how can we start designing products that are climate-friendly, more resilient to changing weather patterns, and significa...

"We must teach kids that they can be a manufacturer too – not just a doctor, lawyer, or fireperson. You get to work with cutting-edge machines and with your hands, but we haven’t really been able to create this feeling yet."

There’s a lot of work to be done when it comes to reaching down further into school systems to help them understand, and to help teachers and faculty understand that manufacturing is a viable...

"When it comes to AI in the industrial world, it represents supply chain optimization with demand forecasting, predictive maintenance, machine vision for quality control, and much more. But it also represents the elimination of manual tasks."

Views on AI have changed drastically over the last five or so years, suggests Naresh Ram, Chief Science Officer at AAXIS. Today AI represents the elimination of manual and r...

“Whether its tariffs, COVID-19, the chip crisis, shipping issues, changes in EV direction, or beyond; every market disruption is a chance to adopt or adapt your strategies and methods of getting things done.”

In this special panel discussion episode of the Manufacturing Matters podcast, Jeff Stello (Metaphase Technologies), Jason Covar (The Imaging Source), Gerd Walter (Creative Automation), and Stu Shepherd (this year’s Engelberger...

The waveguides, modulators, microscopic lasers, photodetectors, and other optical components that form photonic integrated circuits (PICs) all need to be perfectly aligned to minimize signal loss on the chip. PICs simply cannot improve yields, lower costs, or efficiently scale without ever-faster alignment tools able to perform with nanometer precision. In this episode, TECH B2B’s Dan McCarthy chats with Physik Instrumente’s Scott ...

When systems integrators hit roadblocks where they must design something brand new that’s never been done before, that’s what we’re good at.

There are a lot of great systems integrators out there that build industrial automation systems that can do exactly what you need, bringing together industrial robots, controllers, vision systems, control cabinets, PLCs, and so on, explains Doug Harriman, Vice President of Engineering...

Systems integrators can become victims of their own success. In these cases, remote support becomes a much more viable and cost-efficient option.

Some systems integrators can become victims of their own success. When integrators deploy many systems and the crew that built the cells don't have the bandwidth to travel and see all these customers and can’t staff up massive service departments – it can become an issue. Co...

By some measures, the production of optics and photonics core components is $400 billion a year market now, and the technology’s downstream value far exceeds that figure — particularly when calculating in new developments like photonic integrated circuits (PICs). But will photonics ever challenge the value of electronics? Or is it more of an analog to electronics’ early days? Or is photonics simply one of the electronics industry’s...

If you're selling a limited number of products over the course of Q1-Q3, and then suddenly you have this incredible spike in demand with peak season, that variability doesn't lend itself to sort of traditional forms of automation.

The world is changing, day to day, week to week, and what you are selling today may not be what you are selling tomorrow. In addition, consumer e-commerce demands can shift drastically ...

Whether it’s in retail, robotics, or quality inspection, our customers today are finding ways to leverage AI to merge multiple different components at once instead of having a single line for one component.

While the attention of the masses may gravitate toward robots and AI, machine vision remains an indispensable and increasingly vital technology for businesses of all types around the world. In this episode of Manufactur...

Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) technology is sparking transformations in applications as diverse as LiDAR systems, agri-food, and hyperscale data centers. But manufacturing PICs at scale demands a level of complexity beyond the scope of any single company. It will take an ecosystem. That is the principle behind PhotonDelta’s alliance of materials foundries, PIC designers, chip packaging firms, and other technology partners wor...