Want to a know what systems integrators are working on? Good luck! Sometimes their own engineers don’t even know. To ensure they will be first to market with a hot new product, manufacturers often go to great lengths to protect the secrecy of what they’re assembling and how they’re assembling it.
A lean transformation requires striking a difficult balance between leveraging the efforts of the whole organization and enabling local ownership and drive.
Automakers usually try to find the best way to assemble the cars they build. In a bizarre twist on this theme, Mazda has spent the past 2 years and probably millions of dollars figuring out how to destroy cars.
In 2008, ASSEMBLY magazine is celebrating the 5th anniversary of its Assembly Plant of the Year award. The first four recipients of the award were each involved in diverse industries and were located in different parts of the country. However, they each shared something in common: a keen embrace of lean manufacturing and a desire for continuous improvement.
At press time, American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc. (Detroit) remains locked in a month-plus long strike with the United Auto Workers union over proposed pay cuts.
Robots can bring the same flexibility, efficiency, accuracy and tirelessness to test and inspection applications as they can to more traditional tasks.
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