With all the buzz about big data, the Industrial Internet of Things, Industry 4.0 and other advanced manufacturing topics within the industrial community these days, it wouldn’t be surprising if you’ve been asking yourself, “How will smart manufacturing benefit me?”
If something is prefaced with “smart,” the implication is that it will make life better for us than its “dumb” competitors. Cases in point include smart manufacturing. Smart factories. Smartphones. Smart TVs. And smart technology, without which the previous “smart” examples wouldn’t exist.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines smart manufacturing as fully integrated, collaborative manufacturing systems that respond in real-time to meet changing demands and conditions in the factory, in the supply network and in customer needs.
The implementation of Internet of Things (IoT) has become widespread over the last decade. Before then, Machine to Machine (M2M) communication was the standard for machine connectivity. It started in the 1990s, when low-cost RFID tags were first placed on products to track them through the supply chain.
In recent decades, South Carolina and New York have built world-class industry clusters producing tens of thousands of high-paying jobs. Greenville did it in high-tech auto making; Albany, in nanotech.
Today’s industrial workers are able to see and do things that would have been impossible just a decade ago. Augmented reality (AR), an innovative digital technology, is both enhancing what people can see and how they can use that added information to accomplish specific tasks. And it couldn’t have come at a better time
Whether you’re for or against connected cars, they’re already becoming much more commonplace in markets around the world.
SME and AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology, will take their co-sponsored Smart Manufacturing Experience event, bringing the future of manufacturing to Pittsburgh in 2020.
While the term “manufacturing automation” has struck fear in many workers’ hearts due to worries that their jobs will be eliminated, its effect is actually much more complicated — and has proven to be beneficial to employees as well as employers.
Mitutoyo America Corporation will be exhibiting coordinate measuring machines, data wireless communication systems, machine vision systems, and more in Booth 415 at the Smart Manufacturing Experience, April 30-May 2, 2018, at the Boston Convention Center, Boston, MA.