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Designing a new medical device is a bit more complicated than designing a toaster or an automotive cooling system. Besides the issues common to any product—feasibility, usability, and design for manufacture and assembly—there are also issues of biocompatibility, sterilization and FDA regulations to deal with.

If you’ve ever received a package from an online retailer, you probably didn’t give the protective packing material a second thought. You opened the box, removed your order, and discarded everything else.

Movies and TV shows consistently promote lead characters who are able to complete their mission with little or no help from others. In the world of fastening, self-tapping screws fit this role better than any fastener, as they have the ability to create mating threads in metallic and nonmetallic base materials.

New plastics and coatings are giving automotive engineers a wealth of options for interior design. These materials offer the promise of additional functionality beyond just decoration or passenger protection.

Taking a part that was assembled from several components and reducing it to one 3D-printed part has obvious benefits like weight reduction. But there are also other value propositions that start from the beginning of the design phase and reach towards end-use safety and reliability.

For decades, appliance designers have used plastic materials to solve engineering challenges in design capabilities, labor and material costs. 

Every worker and piece of equipment must multitask if a company is to be successful. This is the business philosophy of most wire harness manufacturers, particularly those that are small, like Manufacturing Resource Group (MRG).

The key to Blichmann Engineering’s Tower of Power home-brewing system is its temperature control module, which monitors and adjusts the temperature of mash as it is being circulated.

It goes without saying that every manufacturer wants to ensure they are assembling a quality product. Standards and specifications from various organizations provide a guideline from which manufacturers can measure different aspects of quality, while also providing the customer with the reassurance that they are purchasing a trustworthy, long-lasting product.

Over the years, just about all organizations have adopted a continuous improvement program, many based on lean principles. But there’s a key question that often never gets asked: How does a company know where to improve next?