Dissecting the New Technological Waves for Manufacturing Industries
Summary: Manufacturing has never been easier thanks to the resurgence of new pieces of equipment.
In today’s manufacturing environment, a new wave of technologies are storming through to create a computer-driven setting – sharing little resemblance with its dark floors of the past. For large-scaled companies, this means a wide variety of tools to create smarter factories and also allow them to create new and innovative products that weren’t available before. And, thanks to the low costs of materials, small companies can also get in on the piece of the pie too.
The revolution, so to speak, is being accelerated thanks to the newest trends such as low cost and accessibility, cloud computing, decreased costs of electronic sensors, and other components that can make machines much more productive – don’t forget advances in software and communications technology.
Low Cost, High Reward
With a new wave of cheap components, facilities can now implement high-tech inventions that will need little human help to perform a task and also collect a huge amount of data as well. For instance, managers will get alerts about potential issues or can study numbers to find a way to increase the overall efficiency of the company. Additionally, with an immense amount of technological advances hitting the industry, new fabrication methods can now be performed that steer away from the production-line model.
Additive Manufacturing
One of the most efficient designs is known as additive manufacturing, which is the process of creating a three-dimensional object of any shape with only the use of a digital model. Now, these machines can utilize a variety of different materials to create things such as fuel nozzles, sneakers, a portable power pack, and most surprisingly, human organs. With a versatile piece of equipment, the machines can be custom-designed to fabricate a limitless array of objects. Additive manufacturing also enables the creation of materials with numerous parts and components without assembly. This process is performed entirely by computers that follow specific instructions. The incremental cost of producing each part correlates directly to time and materials.
Now, this doesn’t go without saying that there wont be challenges up ahead. For one, additive manufacturing works from digital models, which increases the vulnerability of a company to theft. However, with such a large step forward, it’s safe to say that the manufacturing industry is on its way up.
