You’re busy making what will clearly be an amazing meal. You check the recipes, get out the ingredients, and are chopping away. And with all that multitasking, that’s when it happens—you slice your...
Karen Hawthorne
Smarter Care, Closer to Home
The Total PackageThe Art and Science of Packaging Design
Packaging may be one of the most important yet overlooked aspects of our lives. In a consumer culture where nearly every item we purchase is either shipped to us or found on a shelf, the package it...
Rethinking Plastic Waste SolutionsNew Ideas for a Circular Economy
Right now, floating somewhere in between California and Hawaii, there is a mass roughly twice the size of Texas. It’s known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and it is largely made up of plastics....
Sustainable Manufacturing MattersBenefits for Business and the Environment
We’ve heard a lot about climate change and the news has not been good. In fact, 2024 was the hottest year on record and to make things more ominous, it was also the first year that exceeded a...
Our 3D FutureCustom Design from Shoes to Vehicles
Manufacturing is in the midst of transformation. The industry has evolved from basic building to far reaching and varied techniques that have produced a myriad of new products for consumers. And...
Leveraging Big Data for Big GainsEAC Product Development Solutions
“We’re just not as efficient as we should be.” These words, along with worrying about staying ahead of the competition, have kept many a manufacturing CEO awake at night. However, finding more...
AI in the OR?Advances in Robotic Surgery
Robotic surgery has been around in one form or another for about 40 years, with the earliest case being the Arthrobot, a voice-controlled positioning robot for orthopaedic procedures in Vancouver in...
Rubber Reimagined – Turning Old Tires Into Fine FlooringEngineered for EvolutionDinoflex
Driving—it’s something that most of us do, and let’s face it, where would be without it? But we also know that it comes with downsides for our environment. The emissions are the obvious part, but...
Recycled Rubber and Plastic BottlesGreen Moves for Automakers
The rise of EVs and hybrids on the market has brought massive changes to how cars are powered. The emphasis on finding alternatives to fossil fuels, or at least reducing the use of them, is also...
Overcoming Workplace BiasesThe Race to Recruit Women
If you have worked in manufacturing for any length of time you have probably come up against the significant challenge of finding and retaining talented employees. And while recruiting and retaining...
From Kids’ Motocross to Military Intelligence – The Digital Transformation of a Motorbike CompanyCobra Family of Companies
Any given summer, in places like Mount Morris, Pennsylvania and Lakewood, Colorado, you can head just outside the city limits and see races that are part speed and part acrobatics as motocross...
A Shiny New Future for Textiles in AlbertaDavey Textile Solutions
First responders at a traffic accident at night not only have to act quickly to save lives, they also face the danger of oncoming cars while they do it. That’s why shiny strips of 3M Scotchlite...
Smooth Operators – Innovations in Noise and Friction ControlVibraSystems Inc.
Vibrations are all around us and, by and large, we may not think much of them when we are exposed to them for a couple of seconds. But they can be a serious problem in many ways for manufacturers....
Out-of-this-World ManufacturingBuilding in Low Earth Orbit and Beyond
Back in the 1960s in the fever of the space race, launching a rocket into the Earth’s orbit was a national endeavour that would eventually lead the U.S. all the way to the Moon. Fast forward 50-plus...
From Click to DoorstepMapping the Supply Chain
Remember those days when you had to get into your car and drive to a store, then browse through aisles to find that thing you were shopping for and physically take it to the front desk to pay for it...
Feeding the WorldIdeas for Abundance
Ten billion is a really big number. It’s also the projected population of the planet by 2050 according to the United Nations. That is an increase of two billion over our current population and,...
Mastering Change in an Industry That Never Stops ChangingNickleson Machine & Tool
90 years ago, cars were topping out at a whopping 65 miles per hour; on average they cost less than a thousand dollars and had something like 95 horses under the hood if you were lucky. Cars have...
A Better WorkspaceIndustrial Robotics on the Factory Floor
With all of the recent advances in AI and machine learning, modern speculative fiction has us poised for either robotic-enhanced utopias or machine-overlord dystopias, depending on an author’s level...
Making Clean Air a PriorityBlade Air
Coming through three years of a pandemic has made us all more sensitive to things we would otherwise take for granted. One of the biggest of these is the air that we breathe—especially in our...
Driving ChangeThe Importance of Innovation for SMEs
Innovation has long been the backbone of the manufacturing industry. Big, established firms, generally keep a tab on the changes in available technology, and successful leaders adapt to survive, but...
Where Would You Like To Go?What’s Next for Electric Vehicles
You are driving along in your car, or, more accurately, your car is driving you along. You have set the car to fully autonomous so that you can lay back on the mattress which folds out for these...
High-tech Innovation for the Critical-Missions MarketLiburdi
For more than 30 years, Liburdi has been a leader in the development of advanced technologies to serve time-sensitive and mission-critical industries such as aerospace, nuclear, oil and gas, and...
The Reshoring BoomHere and Now
Who doesn’t want to see the local economy come back stronger than ever post-pandemic? The business talk these days from the production floor up to the corner offices is all about re-thinking the...
The Time is NowInvesting in Next-Gen Tech
Like many businesses today, yours may be wrestling with the realities of automation, sustainability, supply chain management, and a rapidly increasing choice of new materials and their promises to...
Greener, Cleaner RobotsA Skilled Trades Revolution
Industrial robots have had their place in the manufacturing world for decades. These first-generation industrial robots have traditionally performed work that is deemed dull, dirty, or dangerous....
For the Greater Good, and the Bottom LineSustainability Makes Sense
The U.S. Energy Information Administration says manufacturing consumes 20 percent of the country’s annual energy output, about the energy in 3.6 billion barrels of crude oil. That’s the kind of big...
Second Generation Leader Helps Guide Family Machine Shop to New LevelsRathburn Tool & Manufacturing
In a marketplace that has been filled with uncertainty, global upheaval, supply chain issues, inflation, acts of nature and more, strong leadership is needed more than ever. And while that’s true...
Upskilling Canada’s Biomanufacturing WorkforceCanadian Advanced Therapies Training Institute (CATTI)
Astronauts go through extensive training to contend with zero gravity and the realities of space navigation. Interestingly, the preparation is not so different for people who produce cell and gene...
Up For Any ChallengeCassidy Manufacturing
Reshoring parts manufacturing may be better for your bottom line than you think, says Sean Cassidy, founder and CEO of Cassidy Manufacturing. “If you take an offshore component, you can truly double...
Machine VisionSeeing is Believing for Industry 4.0
It’s likely you have unlocked your phone using the built-in facial recognition software, or maybe you have added dog ears or cat whiskers to a favourite headshot in your image gallery. Or better...
A Business Boom Inspires Investment in AutomationInternational Custom Products (ICP)
For International Custom Products (ICP), the challenges of COVID-19 didn’t result in the well storied downturn in business typical of the global pandemic. How did this Toronto-based sewing company...
One Company’s Timely Response to a CrisisInternational Custom Products Inc. (ICP)
“I said to the staff, ‘this is our call to duty.’ And when we found out there was going to be a shortage of masks and gowns, we started making these items without an order, saying, ‘Hey, we can do...
Rocket Men Will Understand – Lightweight Metals Mean Larger PayloadsAOTCO Metal Finishing
The electroplating of beryllium and of magnesium, ultra-lightweight metals used in aerospace components, is a super-specialized process perfected by AOTCO – the Always On Time Company. That's not...
Powering New Manufacturing OpportunitiesBattery Solutions
In the past, batteries ended up in landfills or banished to boxes in the basement and forgotten. But today, as a new awareness has revealed the environmental fallout of used batteries, recycling has...


































