Ever since the revolution of Henry Ford’s assembly line, it has been possible to produce identical complex products in drastically less time. It was the inception of mass production as we know it today.

A paradigm shift, identified and coined by American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn, is a fundamental change in the approach, concepts, and assumptions of a practice. 

A merchant has a fox, a rabbit, and a head of lettuce and sits on the edge of a river. He has a small raft capable of carrying only himself and one item at a time, but without his supervision, the fox will eat the rabbit, and the rabbit will eat the lettuce. 

An object hanging from a string, moving back and forth, is more than something used to entertain cats or hypnotize patients in old horror movies. It’s called a pendulum. 

There’s an old saying that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Throughout the years, that expression has been adapted to fit different situations, including a “team is only as strong as its weakest player” or “your brand is only as strong as your weakest link.” 

More important than the inventor, the first company to market, or even the technology itself, is adoption of the technology. Whether a technology is adopted early or late can make or break not only the technology, inventor, company, or entire industry, but also an entire economy.

East meets west. It’s a common idiom that has been around for so long that it has evolved to both express agreement and collaboration as well as to describe polar opposites, and just about everything in between.

At its simplest, automation means to make something automatic. In manufacturing, whether describing a single device or an entire system or process, automation refers to performing one or many tasks autonomously with minimal or even no human interaction in a manufacturing or production environment.

By definition, the words simple and complex are antonyms. Complex is complicated, simple is not complicated—literally exact opposites. And as the old saying goes, opposites attract, and the list of subject matter in which simple and complex are joined at the hip is quite substantial.

With the help of microscopy and imaging technologies, as well as automation, manufacturing is making great strides toward more advanced and efficient processes for building bigger and better things.