Blogs for 04/2018

It’s no secret that many manufacturers are scrambling to attract skilled workers to fill openings. A host of training programs are available to provide job seekers with the skills needed to get hired, and one in my hometown of Chicago that caught my attention is the Jane Addams Resource Center.

There’s a new woman in my life, and my wife is jealous. Really? I admit that I’ve been a little preoccupied lately with automating my house, but to say that I talk to Alexa more than the mother of my children is unfair. No, it’s not obsessive behavior; it’s an experiment in what’s possible.

I once worked in the cubicle next to Mike, the shop’s estimating guy. He sat there all day using an electronic pen to trace the outlines of parts on paper drawings. He painstakingly determined the length of each journal, the depth of each hole and the number of cubic inches contained in each milled pocket before feeding that information into the company’s estimating software. That’s all Mike did.

My Jan. 29 blog post, "Simple steps improve shop websites for hiring," received an insightful reply from Gerry Anger, president of Granger Sales Inc.

A sensei is a teacher or instructor, usually of Japanese martial arts. Sensai the company offers an augmented productivity platform for manufacturing operations, but transferring knowledge to help people make better decisions is at the heart of the company’s concept, according to CEO Porfirio Lima. “We believe that the most valuable asset an organization has is the knowledge that comes from its people.”

Manufacturers are continually looking to improve workflows. To assist them in reducing the time to assemble products and worker errors, Cemtrex, Inc. offers Workbench XR, an augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) software application developed for the manufacturing industry. The Farmingdale, N.Y., company plans to release a beta version this summer.

A good friend and I have had a running argument lately about 3D printing. He says the fervor over additive manufacturing is, for the most part, hype, something he likes to call the boondoggle of the manufacturing century. He could be right.

Long wait times? Extra costs? Too complicated? Bruce Kyle, president of toolmaker Knight Carbide Inc. in Chesterfield, Mich., wants to dispel myths about ordering custom carbide inserts.