Future Research Needs for Advanced Manufacturing

Posted on by

Northwestern University is co- hosting a program Aug 12-13 on Future Research Needs for Advanced Manufacturing “from an Industrial Perspective.”

It looks like three of the speakers are from Industry: Dr. Leo Christodoulou from Boeing; Dr. Eric J. Amis from United Technologies; and Dr. Fukuo Hashimoto from Timken Company.

Dr. Hashimoto’s topic will be “Advanced Processes for Manufacturing Precision Components.”

Dr. Amis’ topic is titled “Advanced Manufacturing: The 21st Century Materials Design Space”

The Boeing presenter’s topic is to be announced.

I’m hoping to get a copy of these.

The objective of the program is ” … to provide a forum for leaders in industry and academia to formulate the long term research goals in the area of manufacturing, particularly innovative manufacturing processes and equipment, and to enhance respective process capabilities while taking into account impacts on industrial ecology, for example, raw materials consumption and environmental impact.”

We were almost fooled into thinking that the topic “Making Chips, The Digital Future of Manufacturing” presentation by Dr. Tom Kurfess at Georgia Institute of Technology was about metal removal machining- but we think we were mistaken.

Our compliments to Northwestern University, NAMRI-SME, NSF and ASME for trying to get ahead of the curve on the research agenda.

But we wonder if the Future Research Needs for Advanced Manufacturing might instead be more social and less technological in nature:

How to graduate more Math and Science Literate Students from Public Schools – so that they can qualify to work in advanced manufacturing.
How to get families and educators to see the earning power in High Tech High Skill Advanced Manufacturing careers.
How much to earmark for vocational and skill training as opposed to the billions of dollars being shoveled into 4 year college degree tuition assistance resulting in graduates with worthless degrees, mountains of debt, and no practical manufacturing skills.
How to get a coherent federal policy that matches protection of public, employee, consumer, environmental, and commercial interests across all spheres of public policy regulation and trade.

These might require a different set of Doctors…

But if I could nominate a topic for the program, it might be to address “optimizing interrupted cut machining processes for titanium and high nickel alloys.”

We could use some help making these... — We could use some help making these…

But chalk that up to my industrial practitioner perspective showing. (Titanium has poor thermal conductivity, tends to produce lamellar chips, wants to deform rather than shear, which adds to the demands on the tooling.)

Every megatrend that we see leads our industry to more and more production of titanium based workpieces – aerospace and medical to name just two growing areas, as well as growing demand for chemical processing, energy and aerospace applications of the high nickel grades.

If you could suggest a topic for “future research for advanced manufacturing” to the collective wisdom of the participants in this program, what would you request?

Would it be technological, methodological, or social?

Contact information for the program

Titanium rotor

Population Growth, Globalization and Your Precision Machine Shop

Posted on by

Population Growth and Globalization are two very important determinants or drivers of your precision machine shop business.
Are you paying attention?

We think that the population growth is one of the most important determinants of demand for our products- after all, our products are bought and used by people.

But it goes further than that.

More people means more energy is needed. that means equipment to harvest, recover, refine and transport.

More people means that we need to use smaller amounts of materials to do an equivalent amount of work. This is called ephemeralization, and it is why we seldom see the 4″ Acme running round the clock, while all of our smaller diameter swiss machines are booked solid across multiple shifts.

Ephemeralization is why I can now watch TV on my hand held device, in contrast to the 75 pound “portable ” TV I had back in the 1970’s with a steel chassis and case.

Portable! Not quite... — Portable! Not quite…

Maybe the population isn’t growing where you live- but globally, globally we are adding 82,000,000 more people each year.

If they are to have the same standard of living, that means more energy, more appliances and plumbing, more transportation, more healthcare.

Global Population growth is the “Driver of Drivers.” it is what drives the change in the other market areas that affect our shops: Mobility, Communication, Health, etc.

So how can a shop owner look at these two megatrends of population growth and increasing globalization for planning purposes?

Population growth means

Increasing demand-Automatic machines to economically handle production volumes
Market demand following demographics
Low mass devices- Stronger more difficult to machine materials
Low mass devices- Smaller parts requiring greater precision
Smaller rather than larger size machines

Globalization means

Worldwide markets but needing localized products
Small batches for local markets
Greater competition moderated mostly by freight costs
Skills gaps can be solved “over there” if we don’t solve it here
Costs of raw materials reflect worldwide rather than local economic conditions.

One of the failings of Soviet style central planning was well, central planning.

One of the weaknesses that we have as small entrepreneurial shops is failure to see the big picture.

Population growth means more, smaller, and more difficult to machine and produce materials and products.

Globalization means larger markets but must be localized products, more expense for raw materials and energy, and greater competition.

What is it that your shop does better than anyone else in the world?

If it is making big parts in large volumes, from easy to machine materials, we would not be terribly optimistic.

If you say it is making batches of complex things with high value from difficult to machine materials in small to tiny sizes. if it is for critical parts used to collect or use energy, we think that you might be playing these megatrends just right.

Post inspired by presentation by Horn: Tools for Today and Tomorrow

Population Photo

Portable TV

How To Make Your Shop Findable in the Business to Business (B2B) Space

Posted on by

My mentor, John Sonnhalter posted these three points on B2B search on his blog Tradesmen Insights.

These were gleaned from just released research from Google:

Search – Still big and this should be no surprise. Internet usage among the B-to-B sector jumped from 71% to 88% over the last year. Even more enlightening is when asked about how they used search to research business purposes; there was a 23% increase over last year from 67% to 90%.
Videos – More companies in the B-to-B space are creating videos. They range from how-to videos to thought leadership topics. Here’s an interesting stat – the C suite indexes very high on using videos to find info.
Digital marketing to reinforce the sales force – By the time a B-to-B purchaser actually engages with a company or sales rep, they’re 57% of the way through the decision process.

The trend continues to grow for companies to find other companies- suppliers and customers- online. And that almost always means via search- where “almost always” is 88% according to the first bullet above.

We here at Speaking of Precision have lost count of how many topics we have that are page one on Google.

Here are 5 tips from my experience to help you be findable:

Post regularly– it increases you visibility and Your “trust factor;”
Provide compelling facts and information- not just promotional text. SHARE REAL VALUE;
Always include a photo– often the photo gets to page one on Google images even when the text doesn’t;
Tag. Tags should be relevant and include combinations of terms, not just single words. Think, “search phrases.”
Share on LinkedIn Groups

I can tell you that folks aren’t calling in from seeing advertisements in the phone book these days. And they aren’t seeing salesmen or returning your voice mails.

They do connect when they find what you have posted online.

Be findable!

How about you? Do you have any tips to share to increase your “findability?”

Where Is The Critical Thinking In The Jobs Situation?

Posted on by

Am I the only one missing the optimism in the employment situation these days?

The New York Times headlined “Jobs Data Is Strong, but Not Too Strong…”

REALLY?

The Commissioner of the BLS stated that the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 7.6 percent.

The real unemployment rate (U-6) actually rose from 13.8 percent to 14.3 percent.

No optimism there!

The economy needs to add ~360,000 jobs per month for three years to get the unemployment rate to 6%

Last month, it added 161,000.

That isn’t even half of what we needed!

Part Time Employment is Becoming the New Normal

In actuality, last month the economy added 322,000 part time for economic reasons workers, making the total almost 8.2 million for June. (Economic reasons means “These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they could not find a full time job.”)

The employment population ratio is down to 58.7%, and the civilian labor participation rate is down 0.3 percent for the year.

The New York Times calls this Strong Jobs Data?

What are they thinking?

The Economic Populist Blog sums up the situation like this:

A huge problem with today’s labor market is the gross number of working part-time generally. There are a huge number of people who need full-time jobs with benefits who can’t get decent career oriented positions. Those forced into part time work is now 8,226,000, an increase of 322,000 from last month. Those stuck in part-time has increased 16,000 from a year ago, not a good sign of the labor market. This is a hell of a lot of people stuck with part-time hours who need full-time work. Of those considered employed, a whopping 27,270,000 of them are in part-time jobs, for whatever reason. That’s 18.9% of people employed are in part-time jobs, a very high ratio.

What about the people that are not counted in the official statistics?

Up 2.2 Million since BEFORE the recession!

‘Not in Labor Force, Want a Job Now’ numbers 6,580,000- over 2.2 million more than prior to the recession.

Hopeful jobs report?

Not if one actually thinks about it thinks about it.

Photo credit

July 4, 2013- Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Posted on by

George Washington's Copy Courtesy Library of Congress — George Washington’s Copy Courtesy Library of Congress

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.”

Some things never change.

Washington’s Copy Of Declaration

Time Management-5 Tips for Identifying Your Catalyst Project

Posted on by

I saw this post originally last December and found it relevant. Now that we are midway through the year, I thought that we might want to recalibrate.

Guest Post by Babette Ten Haken

Time Management-5 Tips for Identifying Your Catalyst Project

Where has your work week gone? Does this year seem like it’s only been 10 months long? Somehow, two months went AWOL at some point. In case you are looking at a desk which resembles an archeological dig, or a calendar that has you triple booked, or design deliverables and sales quotas which you never were going to meet anyway, stop flailing away at everything that’s creating chaos and confusion on your professional radar screen.

Here are five tips for keeping your head focused on what’s important, instead of what’s not.

Take a deep breath. Look towards the horizon. (I am not kidding, do it – unless you are driving and reading this message, in which case, please pull over to the side of the road!). What do you see on the horizon? That’s your professional goal. That’s where you are supposed to be heading. It’s in your grasp. How much of it is under your control, or not? What can you change to exercise more control over your professional destiny?
What’s the one thing that you need to accomplish before tomorrow, in order to clear the way to completing all of those other projects? Think about it. There is one major project that needs to be accomplished which will get the rest of the dominoes tipping and clear your path.
Does the work you do in accomplishing that priority project lend itself to your work output for all the rest of the stuff cluttering your desk, calendar, and your mind? I thought so, too. This one project actually has spin-off potential and impacts all the rest of the stuff you need to accomplish to reach your professional goal. This one project is your catalyst project, isn’t it? It’s not an obstacle at all.
How can you leverage your output from your catalyst project into: a) recommendations, b) referrals, c) prospecting, d) branding, e) promotion, f) compensation? That’s the power of understanding the role your catalyst project plays in fulfilling your professional goal.
Is this catalyst project tactical or strategic? You know the answer to that one. You’ve been letting all the short-term stuff clutter your desk, to-do list, and calendar when, in fact, there’s been this strategic project swimming along in the undercurrents. It just won’t go away because it can’t be dismissed: it’s that important to everything else you are trying to accomplish. Stop ticking off stuff on your to-do list, thinking you will “get to” that catalyst project. It’s the one project that provides value-add to all the short-term deliverables on your plate. It’s that powerful.

Identifying a catalyst project is a way of finding the common denominator running across your workload. It may be a way of changing your professional habits, as well, so that you stop being myopic and start focusing on the bigger picture of what it takes to get from here to there.

Take that deep breath today and give yourself a few moments to refocus and re-prioritize. Find that common thread to all that you do. Then, do it well and leverage your output throughout your entire project load, as well as your career goal.

You’ll find it’s time well spent, and time that is far more efficient and rewarding as well.

Clock

June ISM PMI Report-Resumption of Growth in Manufacturing

Posted on by

Good news/ bad news: Manufacturing growth resumes, but Employment shrinks in Manufacturing for first time since September 2009…

“Manufacturing expanded in June as the PMI™ registered 50.9 percent, an increase of 1.9 percentage points when compared to May’s reading of 49 percent. June’s reading of 50.9 percent reflects the resumption of growth in the manufacturing sector for 2013, following the only month of contraction for the year in May.”- Bradley Holcomb, Chairman of the Institute for Supply Management Business Survey Committee.

Precision machined products are widely used key components used in a host of manufactured and durable goods. Precision machined products are a submarket of Fabricated Metals, which is tracked in this ISM Report on Manufacturing.

“A PMI™ in excess of 42.2 percent, over a period of time, generally indicates an expansion of the overall economy. Therefore, the June PMI™ indicates growth for the 49th consecutive month in the overall economy, and indicates expansion in the manufacturing sector following one month of contraction. Holcomb stated, “The past relationship between the PMI™ and the overall economy indicates that the average PMI™ for January through June (51.5 percent) corresponds to a 2.9 percent increase in real gross domestic product (GDP) on an annualized basis. In addition, if the PMI™ for June (50.9 percent) is annualized, it corresponds to a 2.7 percent increase in real GDP annually.” (PMI™ stands for Purchasing Managers Index.)

ISM’s Production Index registered 53.4 percent in June, which is an increase of 4.8 percentage points when compared to the 48.6 percent reported in May.

How do your June shipments compare to this benchmark?

The ISM report showed 11 industries reporting growth in production during the month of June — listed in order — Apparel, Leather & Allied Products; Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components; Furniture & Related Products; Paper Products; Nonmetallic Mineral Products; Wood Products; Fabricated Metal Products; Primary Metals; Petroleum & Coal Products; Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products; and Computer & Electronic Products. The three industries reporting a decrease in production in June are: Chemical Products; Machinery; and Transportation Equipment.

We are glad to see manufacturing back in growth mode, however, we were not pleased with this month’s first sign of contraction in employment.

“ISM’s Employment Index registered 48.7 percent in June, which is 1.4 percentage points lower than the 50.1 percent reported in May. This month’s reading indicates contraction in employment for the first time since September 2009, when the index registered 47.8 percent. An Employment Index above 50.5 percent, over time, is generally consistent with an increase in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data on manufacturing employment.”

We are betting dollars to donuts (remember when there used to be a real difference between dollars and donuts?) that the slowdown in hiring is related to employers’ concerns over Affordable Care Act.

Dollars to Donuts

Calculated Risk

Why Is This Here?

Posted on by

Why is this Here?

Will I use it this minute?

Will I use it this hour?

Will I use it this shift?

Will I use it today?

Why is this here?

This best practice photo of a shop operating on this principle was taken at Paul Horn GmbH.

Horn USA is a PMPA technical member.

If I visited your shop what would I see?

More importantly, what would a customer or job applicant see, and what would it tell them?

PMPA CEU Program- Documenting Training and Continuing Professional Education

Posted on by

PMPA has a history of providing relevant industry training programs at the local regional and national level.

Training for competitiveness and love of the craft

Now, PMPA is providing a means to capture the value of that training for both attendees and employers through Continuing Education Units.

PMPA is pleased to offer the CEU program as a means to recognize and document your employees’ achievements and your investment in their training and career development.

Earning CEU’s will provide employees documentation and credentialing that recognizes their training and professional development throughout their careers in the industry.

The CEU program will help your company track your investment in employee training. The program will provide a means to assist your HR staff in documenting employee training as required for various quality standards and certification programs.

You can find out more about PMPA’s new CEU program HERE and at CEU FAQ.

Chatter- It’s Not the Machine

Posted on by

“If you have a flat tire on a car, you fix the tire, you don’t look at the tire balance, vibration of the motor, or the paint job…”

Thoughtful follow up to our post on Vibration, Harmonics and Chatter from William R. Shaffer, VP at Conicity Technologies.

Conicity provides specialized edge prep solutions for our industry.

Here’s what Bill had to say:

So should I look at the engine mounts, the shocks and struts, the paint job, or should I just fix the tire?

“Perhaps there is some chatter that is a function of machine harmonics, but I have not seen that as of yet. My feeling is that the machines are designed and built with the high level of technology, much higher than the technology that is associated with the design of the cutting tool.

“Cutting tools used to drive the machine tool industry to higher levels of capability because the capability of the tool always exceeded the machine. Spindle speeds and rigidity often lagged tool designs and machine tools were not able to take full advantage of tool capability. That was then. Not today.

“Bottom line, machines have surpassed the tool capability and tools really have not made and significant breakthroughs to push the machine building community.

“I deal with chatter on a daily basis for our customers.

“We have successfully cured severe levels of chatter in metalcutting by addressing the micro-geometry of the cutting tool.

“At the end of the day, vibration starts at the tool because perhaps the tool geometry being suspect, friction, perhaps feed rates combined with tool design, but it starts with the tool.

“If the machine hums and vibrates when it not running a workpiece, then you do have a problem. If you have a flat tire on a car, you fix the tire, you don’t look at the tire balance, vibration of the motor, or the paint job…

“So the question I would like to explore is “what do the people that make the machine tools feel about their machines having inherent vibration and harmonics that create issues in machining?”

“What do the folks who make the machines have to say about this?

“Is the picture that many may have in their minds that “the machine has it’s own set of harmonics, so does the material that is being processed, perhaps even the tool,” valid, or not?”

Your comments please…