manufacturing technology – The OM Blog by Heizer, Render, & Munson

OM in the News: GM’s Bionic Factory Workers

GM worker wearing RoboGlove with Robonaut 2.

General Motors builds a lot of cars. Last year, the company sold more than 3 million cars, trucks, and SUVs just in the US. “As a result,” writes Business Insider (July 7, 2016), “the company is constantly on the look out for ways to make the manufacturing process more efficient.” This week, GM announced that its workers will test out a battery-powered, force-multiplying robotic glove using technology the automaker and NASA developed for use on the International Space Station.

The high-tech glove features a series of sensors, actuators, and tendons that are designed to mimic the dexterity of the human hand, but with amplified gripping force. According to GM, the robotic glove will reduce fatigue for workers engaged in repetitive motions.

The technology — called RoboGlove— was created as part of a 9-year partnership between NASA and GM which culminated in the 2011 launch into space of a humanoid robot called Robonaut 2. “The RoboGlove can reduce the amount of force that a worker needs to exert when operating a tool for an extended time or with repetitive motions,” says GM’s Global Manufacturing Engineering VP. Once the production version of the glove is ready, GM announced that it will be the first manufacturing customer to adopt the concept in the US. In addition to manufacturing, GM believes the technology can be adapted for health care and other industrial applications.

Classroom discussion questions:

What else is being automated in GM and other car maker plants?
Identify some health care applications for the RoboGlove.

OM in the News: 3-D Printing’s Promise–and Limits

3-D printing churns out 100 Square Helpers ( a plastic part that holds credit card reader in place on an iPhone) a day.

Manufacturers are finding that a revolutionary technology has its limits, writes The Wall Street Journal (June 2, 2014). According to enthusiasts, 3-D printing was supposed to rewrite the rules of how things get built. Forget building new factories, or outsourcing production to China. The compact devices would launch a manufacturing renaissance centered in people’s living rooms and garages. Some makers of 3-D printers don’t argue with the critiques. Devices like MakerBot’s are meant to help designers and engineers test ideas and speed the development of products, not necessarily replace large-scale manufacturing.

The crossover point at which point traditional manufacturing is more effective usually comes at 5,000 pieces. So if a company is making a mass-appeal product with a huge production run, such as a Barbie doll, it would probably stick with injection molding. With injection molding, companies must create a different mold for every different part they want to produce. And if the specifications for a part change, they must come up with a new mold for it. But with 3-D printing, there’s no mold—just a computer model of the part that can be updated at any time. What’s more, 3-D printing can easily handle complex designs and print an item with multiple parts all at once. With injection molding, parts often need to be manufactured separately and then assembled.

3-D printing is also becoming invaluable for military applications. Military hardware can have a working life of 30 years, so it’s far less expensive to 3-D print parts as needed than to keep the necessary tooling around for the entire life cycle of the item. For instance, workers assembling the $116 million Lockheed F-35 jet fighter use hundreds of 3-D printed tools to assemble the plane, with numerous 3-D parts in development.

Classroom discussion questions:

1. Will 3-D printers replace traditional manufacturing?

2. Explain how 3-D printing works.

OM in the News: The Barcode’s Intelligent New Rival

In June 1974 history was made at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio, with a ten-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum. It was the first time a commercial item bearing a Universal Product Code was scanned by a cashier at the checkout. Forty years on, the barcode has transformed the world of commerce by providing reliable product identification, tracking and pricing. Nearly everything now comes with a barcode.

As revolutionary as it was, the barcode has limited abilities, reports The Economist (March 8, 2014). It can impart only the information it was printed with and that can be read by an optical device. The next generation of labeling contains tiny printable electronics able to generate, store and share information. The technology behind “smart labels” is a flexible film of electronics that can be printed like a barcode. The memory circuits which can be used by smart labels to store information are printed as a film of ferroelectric polymer sandwiched between two electrodes. A tiny 20-bit memory label can store over 1 million combinations.

Yet another advancement is called Near Field Communication (NFC). This allows a user to tap an NFC tag with a portable device, like a smartphone, to send or receive data. NFC is a more sophisticated version of RFID and is already used by some contactless payment systems. By incorporating NFC, smart labels will be able to communicate wirelessly. Besides conveying product codes, applications include recording storage times and temperatures for perishable goods like food and pharmaceuticals. Smart labels might even be programmed to automatically discount their prices in response to marketing campaigns. To gain widespread use, smart labels will need to be cheap. Basic printed-memory labels can be produced for around 2 cents. Printed sensor-labels cost 50 cents, compared with $10 or more for a system using conventional microelectronics.

Classroom discussion questions:

1. How do RFID tags differ from barcodes?

2. Why are smart labels a major new OM tool?

OM in the News: Social Media on the Factory Floor

According to a recent survey by the Manufacturing Leadership Council, 13% of manufacturing executives plan to digitize their design/production processes, and social media tools represent an important component. By 2023, that percentage will rise to more than half. “What’s the goal of increased social media-based interactions, ” asks Cisco News Network? Manufacturers want to tap into valuable customer opinions, preferences and desires. They also want to encourage collaborations between employees, partners and suppliers in order to create better end products.

For example, Frito Lay offers one illustration of a manufacturer going directly to its core constituency for critical product feedback. The company collaborated with customers via social media to define and select the most appealing flavor ideas. Such combinations of crowdsourcing—a form of distributive problem-solving—and taste buds represents a novel, and completely different, approach to the use of social media in manufacturing.

At the other end of the spectrum, a range of more industrial companies are beginning to employ social media-driven, collaborative tools for their workforce. Airbus offers partners and dealers a range of interactive procurement portals. These platform-based resources enable suppliers to describe their capabilities to Airbus buyers in addition to exchanging requirements and proposals online during the bid process.

Such social media trends extend even further. Industrial Mold and Machine in Twinsburg, Ohio makes custom molds for plastic bottle manufacturers. The company empowers its workers by providing an iPad-accessible Social Media platform for production-line quality control, design access and problem-solving.

It appears that more and more manufacturers will use collaborative Social Media technology to advance their operations through multiple, diverse collaborations.

Discussion questions:

1. Do you think social media can add value to the manufacturing process?

2. What is crowdsourcing?