It was really a matter of getting with the times. PACE Industries, a U.S.-based die-casting company, was not unlike many organizations struggling to manage environmental, health and safety (EHS) processes. They were looking to get out of the old world of paper and Excel spreadsheets and into the modern age of intelligent digital reporting. A company with a history dating to the 1970s, PACE was buried under a spreadsheet mountain of incident reporting from 12 divisions and 21 locations throughout the U.S., plus two plants in Mexico. It’s a busy place. You name it, and PACE probably manufactures it, taking aluminum, magnesium and zinc, melting it down, putting it in high-pressure molds, and literally turning it into thousands of parts. Everything from components for the automotive and lighting industries, to barbecue grills, and even guidance chips for missile systems. Suffice to say, paper-based processes simply weren’t cutting it.
Read More →How a Safety Management System Can Save You Money
A software-based system for managing safety in manufacturing organizations may hold the key to unlocking efficiency, improving processes and creating safer workplaces that, at the end of the day, puts money back in the pockets of these businesses. Experts say that Safety Management System (SMS) support the ability of manufacturing companies to help change leadership thinking and cultures in reducing the number of workplace injuries through increased awareness of, and involvement in, safety programs, and ultimately elevating the important of and commitment to safety across entire organizations.
Read More →Gather, Predict, Change: How Smart Leaders Tame Risky Systems
Manufacturing organizations face an increasingly complex and unforgiving Environmental, Health & Safety and Quality (EHSQ) environment. Yet, many companies are still relying on traditional tools to manage EHSQ risks that fall short of meeting today’s challenges. Intelex Technologies’ white paper, “Gather, Predict, Change: How Smart Leaders Tame Risky Systems,” provides an overview of the limitations of traditional EHSQ management approaches and outlines three steps to developing a proactive, forward-looking, system-level approach to managing EHSQ risks. Get your copy today: http://bit.ly/2FVmYm2.
Read More →Transforming Health & Safety with Mobile Technology
What got us to where we are today will not get us to where we want to be tomorrow. Decades of awareness building, training, and record keeping on Occupational Health and Safety – spearheaded by private and public enterprises and prodded along by governments – have got us to where we are today. These efforts have moved us incrementally along a path over the past four decades from literally dozens of deaths per day in the US alone, to a quarter of this number today.
Read More →ISO 45001 May Be Particularly Beneficial To Manufacturing
ISO 45001 will heap a whole lot more responsibility on to the already full plates of top managers. The standard puts business management on the hook to create, orchestrate, maintain, monitor, develop and actively promote a system that takes occupational health and safety (OH&S) policies and embeds these into the culture and operation of a business’s everyday activities. The corollary to this is that leaders will need to find a way to ensure sufficient financial, personnel and time resources are devoted to the successful implementation of a management system for OH&S. At the heart of the ISO 45001 standard is a need for worker involvement through participation in decision making, evaluation procedures, implementation and feedback mechanisms.
Read More →Saving Lives and Limbs With Big Data – A White Paper by Intelex Technologies
In almost all cases, workplace injuries and casualties are preventable. Intelex Technologies, the leading software provider of Environment, Health, Safety, and Quality Management, has been capturing data on the events leading up to workplace incidents, the circumstances surrounding them, and the after-effects for over a decade, to provide data that can prevent workplace incidents from occurring. “In the white paper “Saving Lives and Limbs With Big Data,” Intelex Data Science Advisor Dr. Gary Edwards, challenges the traditional Safety Triangle as the ultimate guide to safety and explains their Data Science findings that have the potential for eliminating the most catastrophic incidents.” Learn about their findings and access their white paper here, http://bit.ly/2rkSMgU.
Read More →Highlights from the American Aerospace & Defense Summit
For two days in December, 150 peers from the aerospace and defense industry gathered at the American Aerospace and Defense Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona. Here, they heard first-hand case studies and strategic insights from some of the most prominent manufacturers in the industry, including Airbus, Northrop Grumman, GE, United Technologies Corporation, Raytheon Missile Systems, Triumph Aerospace Structures, and Meggitt. Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the key lessons delegates took away from the event were around lean deployment, how to embed a customer focus into every aspect of your business and, above all, organizational culture.
Read More →Additive Manufacturing in the Aerospace Industry
“With 3D printing, the old rules of how we design things are out the window,” said Terry Woychowski, VP, NA Test Operations at LINK in his talk on “The Brilliant Machine Age” at the American Automotive Summit. “You can now create a component exactly how you want it, without excess material.” The result is lighter, more cost-effective parts. The opportunities this presents are endless. We have previously covered additive manufacturing in the automotive industry, but the aerospace industry is another place we are seeing the effects of this new technology today. Despite the tremendous opportunities additive manufacturing presents, it is still a time-consuming process, and therefore best suited for high-end components used in low-volume products, such as aircraft. According to a recent study by ABI Research, due to the sheer size of the American aerospace industry and its defense budget, the U.S. aerospace and defense industries will drive much of the growth in additive manufacturing over the next ten years, producing additive manufactured parts and products with a value of US$17.8 billion in 2026.
Read More →The Digital Tipping Point: Achieving Superior Insight & Agility
In his session “The Digital Tipping Point” at the American Aerospace & Defense Summit in 2016, Matthew Cordner, Director, Global ERP and Business Intelligence at Textron Inc., told the audience that, “For many companies in mature markets, excellent product performance is no longer a differentiator, it merely earns you the right to compete.” What differentiates a company, he argues, is their ability to provide superior insight and agility. Cordner provided Netflix and Dell as examples. Though these companies did not sell especially superior products to what was already on the market, it was innovation in their supply chains that allowed them to be successful. Netflix, which began by delivering rental DVD’s to customers, improved on the Blockbuster model by selling the same product but getting it to customers faster and more conveniently. They were able to collect tremendous amounts of data that allowed them to not only to go digital and recommend content to viewers but also produce that content and capture more value from their products.
Read More →E2M: Taking Engineering to Manufacturing for the Aerospace & Defense Industry
Many organizations face challenges associated with resource constraints. They may have engineering teams that are overstretched due to working on multiple programs simultaneously, while new programs rely heavily on recent graduates who don’t have especially strong manufacturing resources and budget available for IRAD (Internal Research and Development). When it comes to bringing their products to market, many organizations find it challenging to identify a suitable manufacturer that understands engineering concepts and demonstrates problem-solving skills to help resolve issues. It can also be difficult to find manufacturing companies that can take projects from initial concept sketches to prototype, test verification, and through to full production quantities. Some smaller companies may be quick to react with a few samples, but are unable to supply product with stable manufacturing processes, while large suppliers typically are unable to offer the flexibility required by many organizations. Development time often takes a few years before production launch. In the meantime, the organization’s team may change, which emphasizes the importance of continued stability at the supplier level. This ebook by Generis Group, in partnership with Domaille Engineering, tackles the biggest challenges aerospace & defense manufacturers face when taking a concept from engineering to manufacturing. It provides information on the E2M (engineering to manufacturing) process, how it goes above and beyond DFM (design for manufacturability), and what criteria an organization should consider when assessing suppliers to help take their product from engineering to manufacturing.
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