Large corporations in the United States must do something differently. For more than 25 years, manufacturing corporations tried to improve operations irrespective of their size-be it GM, Ford or a small company in a remote area. However, outsourcing of manufacturing continued and was followed by outsourcing of non-manufacturing operations.
I recently received an e-mail from a faithful reader who had a problem regarding the calibration of adjustable thread ring gages. He realized that the rings should be verified using calibrated thread setting plugs, but he didn’t have enough of them to cover all of his rings. His company had avoided buying setting plugs in the past, so he doubted they would do so now.
Have you been spending more time on Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity or any of the other travel-related Web sites lately? While the lackluster economy of the past year has curtailed travel for many quality and manufacturing professionals, one can’t stay in their office forever if they are to improve their business.
While there is debate about whether the economy is still in a recession or in recovery mode, one thing is for sure, companies are doing more with less. Worker productivity-the output per hour of all individuals-rose at a seasonally adjusted rate of 6.4% in the nonfarm business sector during the second quarter of 2009, following a pace of 0.3% during the first three months of the year, according to a report released in August by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
We experience torque daily in numerous applications-from turning the volume dial on our alarm clock, to opening the door to our home. For the manufacturers of these products, and numerous others, it is essential to verify that the amount of torque required to operate these products meets specifications.
Functional analysis at Schneider-Electric took a “quantum leap” with the new feature inspection capabilities introduced in Geomagic Qualify 10 software from Geomagic. The software enables users to quickly detect, create and inspect geometrical features for tasks such as calculating size, analyzing fit, comparing 2-D and 3-D features, and measuring point-to-point and feature-to-feature distances and angles.
Thermoformed packaging components roll off the production lines by the thousands at Portage Plastics Corp. From instant cereal bowls to clamshell packaging for windshield wiper blades to containers for baby wipes, the variety in sizes and shapes of containers the company can produce is mind-boggling.
The hydraulic casting components made at Rexroth Guss, the subsidiary of Bosch Rexroth AG, are characterized by complex, core-intensive construction and many free-form surfaces. These costly parts, made of cast iron or spheroidal graphite iron, are invariably designed in 3-D. The transition from 2-D to 3-D design some years ago also prompted the quality department to look for an appropriate measuring solution.
The Volkswagen foundry in Hanover, Germany, produces more than 1.5 million cylinder heads and 1.3 million intake manifolds each year for Volkswagen, Audi and Bentley engine manufacturing. In Hanover, these aluminum engine parts are manufactured using the ‘hot box’ sand core production method.
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