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The city of Hamburg, Germany, has 17 libraries that recently implemented a fully automated check-in and checkout system that includes a network of “smart” conveyors reminiscent of those used in cutting-edge warehouses and factories.

Hi-Heat Industries Inc. (Lewistown, MT) manufactures flexible heating elements that are used in a wide variety of applications, including everything from the restaurant industry to composites manufacture and the military sector.

Automotive supplier Dynamit Nobel Kunststoff GmbH (Weissenburg, Germany) assembles a range of different products at its plant in Pappenheim, Germany.

In 2004, Group Dekko began deploying a networked information system connected directly to its processing machines, so that the company could gather production information from its various manufacturing operations.

At its pump assembly plant in Sunderland, England, Grundfos recently installed a flexible, semiautomated workstation to attach pump covers to two different pump housings.

Specialized Health Products Inc. manufactures medical safety needles that minimize the threat of needle sticks to healthcare workers.

Most automated assembly systems are designed to make one specific product. When production of that assembly ends, the systems are scrapped or reconfigured at great expense. But, it doesn’t have to be that way.

The objective is to eliminate waste: infighting over whether lean or Six Sigma gets credit creates waste.

On the one hand, manufacturers say they are unable to find and hire workers. On the other hand, people out in the “real world” are contradicting this view.

Much has changed since Jack Kirby and his colleagues at Texas Instruments invented the integrated circuit in 1958.