Free Advanced Mechatronics Seminar for Motion Control

Danaher Motion Performance Controls (MEI), in partnership with The MathWorks and sponsored by Design World magazine, is hosting a free half-day seminar on Advanced Mechatronics for High Performance Motion Control on Wednesday, October 22, 2008, at the Boston Marriott® Newton hotel.  Persons interested in attending can learn more and register online at http://www.motioneng.com/mechatronicseminarOct. Read more

Tips to keep your design’s energy footprint small

The cost of most forms of energy is on the rise. Consequently, more attention is focused on how much energy a component, device, product, or equipment consumes. Here are suggestions
to help keep that consumption low.

By Leslie Langnau
Managing Editor – Design World

Consumer appliances have it. European machine tools have it. And if the cost of energy continues to rise, nearly every industrial product, device, or piece of equipment created for the US market may have it too. “It” is an energy efficiency label that tells how much energy the device will use, either on an average annual basis or over its useful life. Read more

UK Manufacturing M&A activity buoyant in H1 2008

M&A activity in the UK manufacturing sector has shown remarkable resilience in the first half of 2008 with 103 deals announced worth a combined value of £7.38bn, according to a study by PKF Accountants & business advisers.

The PKF report, Deal Drivers UK, produced in association with mergermarket, showed that H1 2008 deal flow massively surpassed both value and volume levels seen in H2 2007, when 84 deals worth only £2.64bn were announced.

Furthermore, H1 2008 figures compare favorably with those seen in the same time period in H1 2007 period when 112 manufacturing transactions worth £10.81bn were concluded.

Source: Process & Control Today

Electric Car Factory Breaks Ground in Kentucky

An electric car factory broke ground in Kentucky for Integrity Automotive, a new joint venture expected to manufacture the Alias and other electric vehicles from ZAP.

Construction equipment arrived at the site of the Wilkey North Industrial Park on Thursday and a site contractor with a work crew have been mobilized as of Friday to prepare the 200-plus acre site for rough grading, said Randall S. Waldman of Integrity Manufacturing. The goal of the project is a one million square foot factory for electric vehicles, a project with an estimated value of $100 million. The factory is expected to begin producing electric vehicles within 12 months and employ up to 1,000 people initially with the possibility of more in the future.

Source: ZapWorld.com

Manufacturers See Benefits from ‘Green’ Operations

Over 300 North American manufacturing, operations and supply chain executives were asked to reveal where their greening efforts are being focused, how they’re being managed and financed, and how the outlook for eco-products is changing.

The survey, conducted by EFT Research, discovered that the corporate mindset around environmental initiatives is changing, and the need to invest in innovative products and new technologies is growing.

With 77 percent of manufacturing executives in agreement that energy prices will rise significantly next year, the focus of operations budgets is turning sharply towards how to cut the dependence on oil. With this in mind, EFT asked respondents to pinpoint what real projects they are investing in, what the challenges and barriers have been, and where they are seeing an ROI. The report revealed that the vast majority of respondents, 95 percent, agree that green manufacturing will continue to expand.

Source: IndustryWeek

Manufacturers Poised for Energy Efficiency Opportunity

U.S. manufacturers on the cusp of investing to boost capacity face a great opportunity to incorporate energy efficiency in their decision-making.

The industrial sector is close to reaching capacity at a time when shipping costs are making domestic production more attractive. This leaves the door open for manufacturers to shift energy use patterns toward efficiency when they make future capacity investments, according to a new report from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

Tight capital markets and uncertainty has many sectors watching their expenditures. Manufacturing, however, is beginning to return to the U.S. amidst skyrocketing marine freight costs skyrocket and weak dollar. In the near future, several industries will be ready to open their wallets.

The ACEEE report said capacity rates for crude, primary/semi-finished goods and finished goods are trending toward historical highs of the early 1980s and late 1990s. Steel represents one resurgent market, with roughly a half-dozen mills planning expansions.

Source: GreenBiz.com

RFID Growing Force in Oil & Gas Industry

Radio frequency identification (RFID), a system made up of rugged readers and tags that wirelessly transmit detailed location information, is playing an increasingly important role in helping oil and gas companies run their businesses more efficiently in today’s fast-changing economy, according to Joe White, vice president of business development for Motorola’s Enterprise Mobility Business’s RFID Division. This technology is an improvement over today’s bar code technologies as it increases automation and reduces manual processes, while withstanding the harsh weather and environmental conditions specific to this industry. More importantly, the real-time track and trace capabilities of RFID offers companies a better way to capture mission critical data to ensure product quality, track assets, meet industry mandates and be more competitive.

According to technology analyst firm, VDC, the oil and gas industry spent approximately $104 million in 2007 on RFID solutions to help refineries, rigs, manufacturers and distributors gain greater visibility into their valuable drilling equipment, while also helping to safeguard mission critical parts from tampering and counterfeiting as they travel from one destination to the next.

Source: IndustryWeek

AC and DC

It has been over 100 years since the first DC dynamo’s were built to power electric lights.  Shortly after Edison’s direct current debut, Nicola Tesla and George Westinghouse gave the world AC powered motors.  And the “War of the Currents” has been going on ever since.  Although its been less visible of a ware in recent years.

Some of the crazy publicity stunts conducted during the “War of the Currents” are legendary.  Edison made the claim that the only thing AC power was good for was electrocution of convicted criminals.

AC power won out, of course.  DC power cannot overcome significant losses due to resistance drop over over distance.  And in order for electricity to serve more people, its all about the delivery system. Read more

Automation Advances Spark Factory-Floor Efficiency

A quiet but unmistakable evolution is sweeping through today’s plants and factories. Prodded by increasing computing power, automation steadily transforms our manufacturing, process, and assembly plants. Fully programmable-precision robots are replacing human operators, often performing tasks faster, more accurately, and more reliably. PCs are populating the factory floor. Wireless communications, along with industrial-grade Ether-nets, continues to revolutionize manufacturing. Advances in integrating the sensing elements — the eyes and ears of the factory floor — with hardened networking technologies promise to make factory operations more efficient and profitable. This trend should broaden over the next couple of years as computing power advances.

Technologically advanced tools like these are forcing old-line plant managers to rethink their approaches to automation. With increasingly shorter time-to-market, more sophisticated designs being called for, and intense worldwide competition reflected in ever-lower product prices, automation is the only approach they can justify. The old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” no longer applies if they want to stay in business.

Once a rare sight on the factory floor, PCs are becoming more commonplace in manufacturing for control and materials-handling applications. They’re starting to replace programmable-logic controllers (PLCs), with a single PC often replacing dozens of PLCs while offering superior information integration, ease of use, and better I/O communications. The trend depends more on software rather than hardware and leverages the continuing advances in computational power and decreasing cost. Some automation experts argue that this simply makes more sense in the long term.

Source: Electronic Design

Skilled Worker Shortage in Manufacturing

More leading manufacturing executives today believe the lack of skilled labor and management skills in the work force—not current oil prices or the weak U.S. dollar—most hurts the growth of America’s economy.

In a new poll conducted by sponsors of the FABTECH International & AWS Welding Show, 27 percent of the executives cited the lack of employee skills as the leading obstacle to growth. Ranked second was oil prices (cited by 20 percent), followed by tax policies (11 percent), weak U.S. dollar (10 percent), the financial commitment in Iraq (9 percent) and the credit crisis (7 percent).

“In many respects, this finding is not surprising as we have heard for many months from leaders in the metal forming, fabricating and welding industries that their biggest challenge today is finding skilled workers, especially young people, who can tackle the increasingly sophisticated tasks required in manufacturing today,” said John Catalano, show manager at Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), one of the event’s sponsors.

Source: Plant Engineering

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