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Precision Metalforming
Plex Manufacturing Blog
Will Jobs Be Lost to Automation?
Product and technology innovation has transformed life as we know it in the last few decades, and the pace of change is only getting faster over the next decade. Inventors and innovators continue to look for ways to make life easier, automate repetitive tasks, and remove the likelihood of human error by teaching machines to do what humans would otherwise do. ...
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3 Reasons Why Real-Time Information Matters to Manufacturers
In order to make timely decisions, you need access to timely data. Unfortunately, for many manufacturers, the shop floor is a black box that is disconnected from the enterprise systems they rely on, so they must depend on reports. Those reports may take hours to prepare by specialists after manually being entered into a system from the paper that originally collected the data. The result is that…
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Capacity Planning: A Critical Element of the Production Process
Imagine this: You’ve won the big contract. You’ve dotted every i, crossed every t, and the paperwork is freshly signed and initialed. Yet, despite your efforts to check capacity before negotiations began, by the time you’re able to start the job new orders have rolled in, and your timeline is now at risk....
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Manufacturers: Unlock the Value of Industry Analysts
At a time when technology buyers are bombarded with software options from all angles, it can be difficult to determine which ones are legit and which ones you should avoid when you’re trying to select an ERP, MES, or Industrial IoT solution vendor....
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How to Optimize your Manufacturing Workforce
It is increasingly challenging to stand up a workforce of skilled operators, but by automating error-prone tasks and operationalizing your procedures, you can mitigate the risk to production and the business. Easy-to-use tools with built-in error-proofing make it easy for your workforce to do the right thing—because it’s the easy thing to do....
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3 Key Steps to Buying the Right ERP for Your Manufacturing Business
We’re not going to dance around it: buying a new ERP solution for your manufacturing business is a big deal. It’s a long, involved process. It requires buy-in from a diverse group of stakeholders. It involves a major investment (both in time and money). And you’ll have to live with the results for perhaps a decade or more....
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Quality 4.0 and the Industrial IoT
Quality is one of the top concerns of most manufacturers. End customers demand quality products so OEMs demand quality performance all the way down their supply chains. There’s no tolerance for delivering anything but a quality product....
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Demystifying IIoT: Terms Every Manufacturer Should Know
By now, you’ve heard a lot about the industrial Internet of things (IIoT). It’s a network of always-connected things and systems that produce a steady stream of data, which can generate compelling synergistic analytics that could be used to increase the overall efficiency of a manufacturing operation among other things. ...
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Making Sense of MES and MOM
If you’re serious about improving your manufacturing operations and have shopped around for systems to help you achieve your goals, you’ve probably run into two commonly used terms: manufacturing execution system (MES), and manufacturing operations management (MOM). Just when you learned what MES meant, you probably discovered that MOM means basically the same thing....
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Industrial IoT and the Pragmatic Manufacturer: Lessons Learned from Prime Day 2019
There is quite a lot of hype surrounding the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) within the manufacturing industry. Large-scale Industrial IoT pilots driven by enterprise-focused technology companies paint pictures of fully-connected and automated plants, complete with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) that promise ROI but require large early investments of time and capital…
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