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OEMs Travel Choppy Economic Waters  Projected market opportunities for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), or machine builders, are rapidly undergoing revision in light of the downturn beginning late 2008.
For example, in its most recent shipments study, published in August 2008, the Arlington, Va.-based Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute (www.pmmi.org) forecast that U.S. packaging machinery shipments would grow modestly in 2009, then substantially in 2010. But events have superseded the forecast.
Still, forward-thinking OEMs are taking advantage of this economic slowdown, observes Linda Onnen, market director of consumer products and OEM with automation vendor GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms (www.gefanuc.com), Charlottesville, Va. “They’re designing their next-generation machine that will leapfrog their competition when the economy does turn around. We [also] do see more attention being placed on efficiency of operation and energy usage.” But, not surprisingly, she suggests that OEMs are now moving cautiously. “Like most companies, clearly, they are taking a ‘wait and see’ approach to many internal decisions, not knowing what tomorrow will bring for them...
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» AUTOMATION TEAM: Workflow Mapping Sprouts in Manufacturing
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Mike Brooks, technology architect with refining company Chevron Corp. and now with Chevron Technology Ventures, Houston, believes that defining and controlling workflow is one of the most important new tasks that should be undertaken in today’s manufacturing.
He cites Microsoft Workflow Manager as a key enabling technology. Workflow Manager is a graphic environment on a personal computer that allows people to map the steps involved in accomplishing a particular task... Read more
» TECHNOLOGIES: Getting Control of Your Documents -
If you’re in business, you have documents.
Probably files and files of them. The cost of maintaining and retrieving documents can be staggering. The document management blog, blog.docpoint.biz, quotes a study, “IDC has estimated that the typical enterprise with 1,000 knowledge workers wastes $2.5 million to $3.5 million per year searching for nonexistent information, failing to find existing information or recreating...
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» INFRASTRUCTURE: Regulatory Tug-of-War Rages in Calibration -
The calibration trend Ed Shuler sees now is the push for reduced manpower in instrumentation and electrical (I&E) shops on unnecessary calibration.
But counteracting that ambition for more efficient operations, “at the other end of the spectrum, regulatory issues, in general, are driving more calibration,” states the Fort Collins, Colo.-based senior applications engineer for controls vendor Honeywell Process Solutions’ (hpsweb.honeywell.com) high-performance-solutions DocuMint team.
In this tug-of-war, regulatory compliance may create calibration problems. “Probably the best example comes from a pharmaceutical manufacturer. They require verification that their pH measurement is within specification at the beginning of every...
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