Continuous Improvement (CI) programs have achieved wide acceptance among manufacturers.

  A large segment of worldwide manufacturing jobs are being replaced with automation. What’s left of conventional manufacturing labor is migrating away from the United States. We need new workplace paradigms.

  Even in the best of times, state and local governments face revenue constraints and pressures to optimize tax collection efforts.

 I’m writing this while on a trip to Phoenix to attend the Honeywell Users Group Symposium. It’s interesting, because Honeywell Process Solutions is often portrayed as the main antagonist to Emerson Process Management in the ISA100 wireless networking standard development process. 

  Fifteen years ago, I was a packaging industry neophyte.

 It’s a half decade since Automation World was launched, and in that time, it has established its own special stamp of style and significance in a somewhat staid and stodgy business.

  Over the last several years, growing cyber threats coupled with the ongoing discovery of new vulnerabilities has demanded a lot of attention within the manufacturing community.

 “An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living.” --Nicholas Chamfort (French Writer, 1741-1794)

 Recently, I attended a conference where an information technology (IT) manager, in his presentation, stated: “We don’t need those heavy documents that consultants write.”

 Manufacturing companies are facing many new challenges today to become more flexible and agile as business models change.

  The German philosopher and poet Goethe said:Concerning all acts of initiative and creation there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: That the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise never have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

  Products in the automation industry have traditionally been sold with “cost-based” pricing—selling price is based on manufactured cost, with target gross and net profit margin multipliers.

  A select group of industrial equipment companies are executing a formula for success that peers may want to take note of, if they plan to remain competitive in the emerging global market.

 Paul was a conscientious employee. He would do a little extra and try to save the company money.

 When I laid out the plan for this series of special reports on wireless technologies in manufacturing last summer, I anticipated that there would be many successful applications that we could share, along with tips for success from the pioneers.

  In order to improve your manufacturing performance, you should put in a manufacturing execution system (MES) system and integrate to your enterprise resource planning (ERP)—right?

  We have not changed our outlook—the economy should avoid slipping into a broad-based recession for most, if not all, of 2008.

  Somewhere between enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) you will find the manufacturing execution systems (MES) layer.

  In order to reach their maximum potential, manufacturing companies must be efficient at coordinating and controlling personnel, materials and equipment across different operations and control systems.

  Many people think that the automation industry is quickly developing a “skills shortage,” which will occur after the current generation of engineers retires.