What do metal water tanks, pickup trucks and RV chassis have in common? They’re all assembled in state-of-the-art facilities that were finalists for the 2011 Assembly Plant of the Year award.

After a dismal 2009, our Top 50 manufacturers are back in the black.

Vision systems used to guide robots pose different challenges for manufacturers than vision systems used for part inspection. The biggest challenge is guiding robots in 2-1/2D applications, where guidance is used so the camera maintains a proper perspective of a part that is level but included in a stack.

All day long, wire harnesses are sealed against porosity at nine Magna-Tech Manufacturing facilities located throughout North America. These wire harnesses are of different lengths, contain wire of different thicknesses, and are made by Tier 1 suppliers such as Delphi, ATPI, Siemens, Group Dekko and Federal Mogul.

When preparing parts for assembly, automakers can always use an extra hand or two. One automaker has found those hands at the end of a dual-arm robot. For the past four years, the automaker has used the dual-arm robot to shorten the cycle time to treat the front and back surfaces of a suspension component.

Bombardier Aerospace has borrowed several ideas from the auto industry that it hopes will help streamline production of the new CSeries regional jetliner.

In addition to using the latest lean manufacturing principles, Boeing's new 787 assembly plant is one of the greenest factories in the aerospace industry.