Indeed, eco-conscious consumers are a growing segment that manufacturers ignore at their peril. But there is a lot of good news in this realm as myriad sustainability options have become available for manufacturers to incorporate.

One of the key principles in sustainable manufacturing is the circular economy; once a product reaches the end of its life, it is either harvested for all its reusable materials or refurbished to provide it with a new product lifecycle. In industry, this can be supported through systems such as tagging products like batteries and electronics and thus tracking a product’s origin and level of recyclability.

For example, Assembly Magazine recently looked at how the automotive industry is finding new ways to take a circular approach through the supply chain of a car. This is especially important when you consider that the average car has about 40,000 parts. That equates to a lot of OEMs contributing to the manufacturing process. To better manage these parts, European automotive manufacturers created Catena-X, which is a data ecosystem for the automotive industry, connecting companies along the supply chain including names like BMW, Denso, Ford, Renault, Volkswagen, and Volvo.

“Catena-X is not just a technology—it’s a paradigm shift for our industry,” Kevin Piotrowski, Chief Transformational Officer of the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG), told Assembly. “We’re enabling OEMs and suppliers of all sizes to achieve unprecedented transparency and visibility—while retaining full control over their data.”

This approach is creating a measurable business impact through enhanced supply chain visibility, accelerated compliance, and improved quality management, all without requiring companies to overhaul their existing systems or partnerships.

Through Catena-X, the industry can address challenges like a product’s carbon footprint, tracking CO₂ across suppliers and products while letting companies retain full control over their data. This all leads to faster root-cause analysis, responsive supply chain management, and the ability to anticipate and prevent problems.

Approaches to how things are ultimately put together is also changing with the greener push toward modular production. That means less glue and more compatible parts that make it easier to swap them out and ultimately recover materials once a product reaches its end of life.

Modular production is gaining quick traction in home construction to meet the rising demand for affordable housing, and that is because the process is often faster, relatively inexpensive, and sustainable. The components of a house are built ahead in a factory to better control the output. And because the pieces are pre-assembled, the process minimizes material waste and delays caused by weather. In the factories, automation like robotic arms can be used for framing, welding, insulation, and panel assembly.

Another interesting move toward sustainability among manufacturers is the shift to leasing products as opposed to simply selling them. The journal, Environmental Science & Technology, discusses the potential benefits that come with manufacturing companies leasing rather than selling their products outright. Where disposal costs are high or production costs are low, volumes under leasing are lower than with selling, reducing the industry’s relative environmental impacts.

“If the focus is shifted from products sold to services rendered, it becomes advantageous to have reliable and long-lasting equipment, especially where research and development costs are high,” the researchers note. “With a service-focused business model, the manufacturer has more to gain from improving product performance and reducing the number of units delivered. In-use factors can be minimized with maintenance, whereas efficiency improvements and manufacturing burdens can be improved with product take-back and remanufacturing.”

Furthermore, with leasing, regular maintenance can increase a product’s functioning lifetime, reducing the overall amount of these products that end up in landfill. And the lessor is generally obliged to perform maintenance on leased items, an advantage as the company in question will retain proprietary knowledge of its products and is in the best position to make repairs and upgrade components, potentially even leading to improved technologies in the industry over time.

Like many other sectors, manufacturing is incorporating AI to help improve sustainability. In fact, AI in manufacturing now extends well beyond supporting automation to support real-time decision-making. This leap forward is described in terms like “smart factories” or “smart manufacturing,” which are part of a larger change known as Industry 4.0. IBM has noted how this advanced approach to production uses a combination of connected technologies, real-time data analytics, and AI to create flexible, efficient, and highly automated manufacturing systems.

As IBM explains, “AI monitors ongoing production processes and adjusts without prompting, which maximizes productivity and reduces waste. These systems revolutionize the way companies manufacture, improve and distribute their products.”

The company points out that AI is also at the heart of the growing trend of human-robot collaboration. Traditional industrial robots often require close supervision and controlled environments, but the new generation of AI-powered collaborative robots, or cobots, can work safely alongside humans. Cobots take on repetitive or strenuous tasks while employees focus on more complex and creative work.

Together, these AI applications propel manufacturing toward smarter, more adaptive, and more sustainable practices.

A key component of making manufacturing more sustainable also means taking a close look at supply chains. An MIT report, Sustainability Still Matters, surveyed responses from 1,203 professionals in 97 countries and found that 85 percent of companies say they are continuing supply chain sustainability practices at the same level as in recent years or are increasing those efforts.

Broadly, the survey found that for European-based firms, the principal driver of action in this is government mandates such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which requires companies to publish regular reports on their environmental impact and the risks to society involved. In North America, company leadership and investor priorities are the factors driving an organization’s efforts.

When it comes to business and sustainability, greenhouse gas emissions are either produced directly or come from the energy used to produce an item. And then there are the emissions that are produced across a firm’s supply chain, including activities involved in producing, transporting, using, and disposing of its products. The report reveals that about 40 percent of firms keep close track of the emissions they directly produce, but far fewer track the emissions of the supply chain. Yet the supply chain may account for roughly 75 percent of emissions overall.

Clearly, trying to calculate the total emissions along a supply chain is no easy task. However, there are opportunities to acquire analytics in this area. One option is called life cycle assessment software, which provides estimates of a product’s emissions, from the extraction of its materials to its disposal.

And finally, one of the ways to make a sustainability impact is with the actual materials that go into the product. Take green steel for example. Traditionally, extracting that all-important iron from ores requires blast furnaces that run on fossil fuels, and on a large scale. The iron and steel industry is responsible for 11 percent of global emissions—that’s the equivalent to all the world’s private cars and vans.

Steelmaking in the U.S. is already greener than in many countries, thanks to the popularity of electric arc furnaces that use electricity, not heat from burning fossil fuels, to melt scrap steel and recycle it. On this front, there are emerging startups such as Boston Metal that say they can use electricity for the iron-making process, a crucial step in making brand new, or virgin, steel, the BBC reports.

Switching from traditional blast furnaces to electric arc furnaces can lower carbon emissions per ton of steel produced from 2.32 tons of CO₂ to 0.67 tons of CO₂, says the BBC. “For ironmaking, some plants could use green hydrogen, made using electricity from 100 percent renewable sources,” says Simon Nicholas, lead steel analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

There are paths forward, with North America taking a leadership position. As sustainability continues to become a greater consideration in purchasing decisions, it is worth looking at how to incorporate the latest advances or find ways to become more sustainable in the existing processes of manufacturing to stay relevant. Consumer preferences will influence the market and help drive change.

The post The Sustainable Shift<p class="company">How Circular Thinking Is Reshaping Industry</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

But for that box to land on your porch (especially in one piece), a lot of steps needed to come together. And one step that probably never gets the attention it fully deserves is the conveyance system. When it comes down to production and packaging, it is conveyors that are crucial to keeping our supply chains moving.

Conveyors are much more than just a belt that products and packages ride along on; they are data-driven systems that monitor, label, and track inventory in real time. They also can weigh, divert, and inspect products as they ultimately get the package ready to go out for shipping.

It is also these systems that keep many businesses working, by reducing production bottlenecks and increasing the capacity of what a given business can produce. And conveyors work across diverse sectors, from food and beverage to healthcare to paper products.

These systems have grown in leaps and bounds over the past 40 years. One industry leader, Pack Air Inc., has been at the forefront of these changes and growth. “It’s very rare now for a customer to have a truly dedicated production line where there are no adjustments needed, just running one product all day long,” says Michael Sohn, General Manager for Pack Air Inc. “They need a conveyance system that can adapt from running individual wrapped products in the morning to a 12 pack in the afternoon and be capable of multiple other product configurations on the same line.”

To get a sense of how much this company has had to adapt to the innovations that have taken place in conveyance, we need to travel back to when Pack Air got its start: 1984. Back then, Van Halen and Prince were at the top of the charts and conveyor belts were pretty much just that—loops of rubber and fabric. They required a lot of maintenance and did little more than move an object from point A to point B.

Headquartered in Neenah, Wisconsin, Pack Air was innovative from the jump, starting with a focus on using air conveyors as a primary means for moving materials. While many companies at the time were fixed on the conventional rubber and fabric conveyors, Pack Air got its name from focusing on air conveyors. Air conveyors move objects along on a cushion of air, avoiding contact with a surface, something particularly important for delicate products. But these conveyors also had a good amount of power to move objects that can be very difficult to convey. For example, a single operator can easily maneuver a window or door assembly weighing 1,000 pounds on one of the company’s Air Tables.

The other major advantage of this kind of conveyance is that there are only two moving parts, the motor and fan, which means few things that can break down. In fact, many of these systems can last for over 30 years with very little maintenance.

“We still do use air,” Sohn explains. “We are unique in the conveying industry when it comes to all the different types of conveyance that we use—fabric belts, plastic chains, and metal chains—and we are one of the few that still uses air.”

But it was soon apparent to the company there was a need to branch out to meet manufacturing demand. That’s because conveyors were changing. From being long loops of belt that moved things along, they became integral pieces of the production line, tied directly to other manufacturing and production equipment. Then technological advances started to introduce smart capabilities like self-monitoring, high-speed cameras to identify damaged goods, and more autonomy through integrated robotics. Indeed, there’s a level of sophistication in this field that many consumers simply wouldn’t know about.

Conveyors have also played a significant part in Industry 4.0 developments, which have seen the rise of automation and smart machines. These developments came about alongside the advent of COVID and the subsequent “Great Resignation” or “Great Retirement,” which saw up to 50 million people leave their jobs between 2021 and 2022, making businesses look at new ways to automate.

“Prior to COVID, roughly 50 percent of our mechanical projects had some electrical scope to them. Today it’s probably closer to 80 percent that have electrical components,” says Sohn. That is to say, customers are automating to make up for the reduced number of workers available.

Since its early days, Pack Air focused on engineering and the technical aspects of customers’ facilities. But since 2019, the company has seen a notable uptick in technical support much earlier in the process, and in some cases, Pack Air provides technical expertise for customers that used to be available to them in-house.

An example of this is EVO, one of Pack Air’s solutions that can be adapted to almost all conveyance applications through an adjustable guide rail that allows for very quick changeovers from a single point with either a hand wheel or an automated motor. So, customers making a changeover from one product to another can do it in a matter of minutes instead of what used to take up to a full day.

But it’s not just selling conveyors that sets Pack Air apart from others in the industry; it is how the team arrives at a solution for each customer they work with. Pack Air’s customers are not experts in conveying, packaging, and material handling; they are experts in producing paper, food, beverages, and all other kinds of consumer and industrial goods. But without that critical step of conveying their products, the whole process would break down. That’s where Pack Air comes in. The company focuses on the root problem the customer is trying to solve, and this may not always be what they wrote in their spec.

As Sohn points out, “If you walk in some place and you say, I have these conveyors for sale and we’ll try to fix your problem by using one of our existing solutions, well, that’s not what we do.” Instead, his veteran engineers and technicians listen at length to the customer’s challenges and develop a unique system in response. “I want the customer to tell me their problems—what works with their existing system and more importantly, what doesn’t work, and how we can change that.”

A recent project for Pack Air was for a cheese manufacturer handling one-pound and three-pound bags of cheese. “They originally came to us looking for a one to three diverter. The cheese is already in the bags, and they were heading toward a strapper,” Sohn explains. “So, they take the individual bags and strap them together as value packs in either two or three packs.”

Pack Air was not making the drop filler or the strapper. Those pieces of equipment were provided by others. “But we were responsible to connect them and do our diverting operation. That requires us to be very familiar with how other manufacturers design their equipment as well,” Sohn notes.

At first, this may sound straightforward, but, like many projects Pack Air gets involved in, there are hurdles to get over. That included redesigning equipment into a very specialized piece of machinery, because the floor space needed a specific path to handle the packaging in a very confined space. “We essentially combined two machines, a one to three servo diverter and a right angle transfer, into a single machine that fit their layout, fit their rate, and did the job.”

And that is a big part of what makes Pack Air special. It is almost like engineering improv; the team is able to create custom solutions by taking standard product lines and fusing them together in a way that meets its customers’ exact needs.

Reaching a creative solution like this doesn’t just happen. It’s a process that starts early on, by understanding the customer’s process and listening to what they need to do. In the above case, “we actually said, ‘wait a minute, I don’t think this works,’ and we started asking more questions.” The questions led to the successful outcome. “The client needs to understand how important those questions are upfront,” says Sohn.

Looking ahead, he foresees an increasing need for specialized advice and a growing demand for more automation. “We always had to consider how a mechanical device was going to be controlled, but we weren’t always responsible for designing a control system,” he shares. Ten years ago, many customers would do that themselves, but that expertise is not available at a customer level like it once was. “What’s different today is that those experts are gone in the larger corporations, and they are looking to us for that responsibility.”

It is a challenge that Pack Air is only too eager to meet.

The post Conveyor Systems That Make Manufacturers More Agile and Efficient<p class="company">Pack Air Inc.</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Few people appreciate this in quite the same way that Murray does. His business has grown to become a significant manufacturing partner for the mining industry and oil fields in Canada and beyond.

And it all started with an unfortunate accident back in 1980.

“My dad fell off a ladder, smashed his heels, and was in a wheelchair for a year and a bit,” says Murray, who had trained as a sheet metal worker. His dad was a coppersmith by trade. “Once he had the accident, our life, everything changed.”

As part of this rollercoaster, Murray joined the family business, which specialized in welding for auto industry players like American Motors and Chrysler. It was based on the family farm near Thornton, Ontario, where his parents still live. He and his dad decided to reinvent the company, and Murray went on to become CEO as they grew and pivoted, now leading in industrial parts and heavy equipment. He’s proud that it’s still a family business.

Part of this new venture included projects with a company called Ramsey Engineering, which makes high-precision weighing equipment for industrial automation. “They would build belt scales that would weigh material, like iron ore going into the mill at the mine or sawdust, aggregate, or cement,” Murray explains. So JEBCO began working on projects for bridges, underground conveyances, cages, hoppers, and bins.

Things can change on a dime in business when a main client is sold. Ramsey was bought by Thermo Fisher Scientific, an American biotechnology company and global medical supplier—which no longer had need of JEBCO’s services. This was a crucial moment and an important change for the company, and the team began to focus more of its resources on third-party or OEM manufacturing.

“We went through the ’90s being a custom manufacturer. We did not get into the construction industry at all,” Murray says of the company’s decision to pursue opportunities in water treatment systems and then pulp and paper. “We stuck with mining or heavy industry, and that took us into pulp and paper because they’re all related, with common threads.”

Processing equipment for the oil sands was a particular growth area, and the company won its bid for weld overlay work for projects with Canadian Natural, one of the largest independent crude oil and natural gas producers. “Basically, it was a hydro cyclone with a feed launderer for the processing of the bitumen product,” Murray explains. “This particular project had a vessel that was lined with what we call a chrome carbide weld overlay. But they hadn’t actually executed it yet.”

The trouble was that the company that JEBCO contracted the work to was unable to provide that service. “We were in a very tricky position of needing to deliver on this, so we developed the process ourselves by being entrepreneurial and just finding a way while being under pressure.”

The feat made JEBCO one of the very first companies in Canada to have a weld overlay over a pressure boundary weld without needing to test twice. Named Ultraclad, this innovation was the world’s first and only fully robotic cladding technology, operating in the continuous 1F welding position, capable of cladding any shape or size of pipe.

Impressed, Canadian Natural came back to JEBCO again a year later, looking for work on the pipe and fittings in Alberta’s massive oil sands. “They awarded us a $10 million contract to line their pipe and fittings. We do this chrome carbide overlay on the inside of an elbow in the 1F position, which, to this day, is not being repeated. And we became a major supplier.”

Company expansion followed, and JEBCO bought a large complex in Barrie, Ontario in 2000, employing about 140 employees, including a full engineering staff. This marked a bright streak in the company’s history until the pandemic struck in 2020 when, like many businesses, JEBCO was upended.

“They announced the official state of emergency and then the six-foot distancing,” Murray recalls. “In the oil industry, they have large coaches to pick you up, holding anywhere from 45 to 65 people. There are thousands of people who they move by coaches, whether it be to the ExxonMobil or the Syncrude site, or the Canadian Natural sites—nobody drives to work.”

One can picture trying to get people six feet apart on a coach; a coach that can hold 60 people now only has 10 people. These logistical challenges coupled with reduced demand meant a slowdown for the whole sector. JEBCO came to a complete halt and had to rethink its business outlook. Part of the redirect included a return to its mining roots and applying its cladding technology.

On the upside, the past five years have seen a pattern of regrowth. “It’s a different landscape. We shifted from 80 percent mining and 20 percent oil sands supply to 80 percent oil sands and then back again to mining and water treatment,” Murray tells us.

While this was a painful shift, JEBCO is seeing the benefits of its agility. More emerging technologies are looking for minerals that the company helps to extract, like silver, gold, and copper. This pivot has also brought JEBCO back to its roots again. The company was reengaged by Ramsey to manufacture the belt scales and tramp metal detection for metal detectors.

Now Murray has signed a licensing agreement with an Australian company to provide clean air solutions for mining and construction support. This is a major win for the company and industry workers in the field, he says of the technology.

“They are basically gigantic dust collectors used to prevent silicosis issues that are prevalent everywhere as soon as you start digging in the ground, whether tunnelling, underground mining, or demolition work. We can collect that dust from the source and remove it from the workers.” By partnering with the founder of the product in Australia and Britain, JEBCO is bringing that technology to the U.S. and Canada and will be its only manufacturer.

Murray sees this as a critical turning point where the industries the company supports are making environmental impact a priority. It comes at a time when businesses with green initiatives have better brand recognition, investor support, and long-term sustainability. Take a ship loading cement: the loader moving the cement onto the ship needs a belt scale on it. The belt scale weighs exactly how many tons are going aboard. JEBCO helps make that happen. Then the ship with that belt scale also needs dust control while being loaded. That’s where JEBCO manages dust control to protect the environment and workers.

“So, whether it’s cement, iron ore, or other products, we feel that we’re setting ourselves up to be complementary to the environment and complementary to our industry,” says Murray. “We’re making good, honest, billable support through our belt scale, so that our clients understand that what they’re paying for or what they’re selling is accurate, and we’re controlling environmental dust issues.”

Looking ahead, JEBCO will be moving to a larger facility in Barrie next year, primed and prepared for what is to come. “We have a great general manager and a great financial manager handling our day-to-day operations as we scale for the future,” emphasizes Murray. “We’re pumped to be going through this next phase of our journey, and we have a great team.”

The post With an Eye for Opportunity, This Manufacturer Welds Its Way to the Top<p class="company">JEBCO</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

For many, while unpleasant, this isn’t a particularly dangerous situation. But for people with hemophilia or diabetes, healing a wound becomes a lot more complicated.

Most of us reach for a bandage when we have a cut—essentially the same adhesive strip we’ve used for the past 100 years. But recently, the humble bandage has been getting a high-tech upgrade. Developers are adding tiny sensors to create smart bandages that can do much more than just cover a wound. These sensors can monitor healing progress and even allow doctors to remotely administer treatment. As ABC News reports, medical journalist Elizabeth Cohen said on the Wall Street Journal’s ‘Future of Everything’ podcast: “The doctor can give a little zap of electricity that can help promote healing. The doctor can open a tiny little valve in the bandage to release some kind of an ointment or cream.”

These are exciting times for the medical industry.

The internet has transformed how we live and work—and now it’s advancing medical devices, giving rise to the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). This refers to devices and applications that connect to healthcare IT systems via online networks. Devices equipped with Wi-Fi can now communicate with each other, enabling real-time monitoring and response.

One of the fastest-growing categories in this space is wearable technology. These gadgets aren’t just stylish—they can positively impact millions of people. In fact, according to Statista, global smartwatch sales reached about $50 billion in 2024, with 234 million users worldwide.

Smartwatches and health apps help people track vital signs like heart rate, sleep cycles, steps, and blood oxygen levels. This has evolved into next-level remote patient monitoring, enabling doctors to make more informed treatment decisions.

A Nature review on wearable technology for heart failure management highlights its potential. Heart failure affects 63 million people globally, placing a heavy burden on healthcare systems due to frequent outpatient visits and hospitalizations. Many of these could be prevented by monitoring biosignals that alert doctors before issues become critical. Devices like smartwatches, Fitbits, and other medical-grade wearables make this kind of continuous, individualized care possible.

New advancements even draw inspiration from nature. Research published in Science looked at starfish-inspired wearable bioelectronics for monitoring physiological signals during movement and real-time heart disease diagnosis. These soft bio-electronics use a five-arm structure to improve signal accuracy while a person moves. According to the authors, “The collected data are wirelessly transmitted via Bluetooth and in situ processed with machine learning (ML) algorithms deployed on smartphones for real-time heart health evaluation.” This bioinspired approach sets the stage for the next generation of wearable technology.

Even traditional tools are evolving. At Boston University, researchers are modernizing the blood pressure cuff. Their new method uses light to measure blood pressure, eliminating the need for the uncomfortable cuff. As biomedical engineering professor Darren Roblyer told The Brink, “This technology measures the optical effects of what happens when your heart beats.”

For people living with diabetes, technology has made insulin management easier and safer through continuous monitoring of blood sugar levels. New “fourth-generation” glucose sensors reduce the number of steps required for readings, increasing diagnostic accuracy.

3D printing is also making waves in healthcare. Take prosthetics: once a time-consuming, expensive process, they can now be custom printed for a better fit in just a day. A 3D-printed prosthetic arm costs around $395, compared to more than $2,000 for a traditional one that takes up to six weeks to produce.

ActivArmor, a U.S. company, is redefining durable, waterproof casts. Using light scanning and 3D imaging, they design custom plastic supports tailored to the contours of a limb and injury, including complicated injuries that include scars and burn and the treatment thereof.

This also helps clinics reduce inventory—rather than stocking a wide variety of splints, supports and braces, they just need a 3D printer.

We can’t talk about innovation without mentioning AI. In healthcare, assistive and autonomous AI are helping detect disease earlier and personalize treatment. As Forbes notes, “Assistive AI can be particularly useful for certain actions, such as evaluating large datasets, taking measurements, or analyzing medical images. In essence, assistive AI can act like a second set of eyes for the clinician, providing support to offload certain tasks and mental drain or super-powering back-office functions.”

So, where is all this heading? As medical devices get smarter and procedures become more refined, new options are constantly emerging. With an aging population and many healthcare systems stretched thin, technology has a major role to play in the future of care. Digital tools can improve access to care, support remote medicine, and enable more personalized, preventative treatment. Most importantly, self-care will increasingly be in the hands—and on the bodies—of everyday people.

The post Smarter Care, Closer to Home<p class="company">Wearables, AI, and 3D Printing in Medicine</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

When done well, packaging hits several notes to create that “I’m so excited to open this!” feeling. Much more than just a wrapper of an item, packaging can bring together design, psychology, and impressive functionality.

There have been many milestones in the advancement of packaging spurred on by new techniques, technologies, and materials, but one of the biggest impacts on packaging was COVID-19 and its fallout, which dramatically changed how much more seriously people thought about the packaging of all the goods they were receiving (given we were receiving so many things through delivery channels).

“COVID-19 accelerated a lot of trends that were already in progress at the time,” says Jennifer Christ, manager of consumer and commercial goods at The Freedonia Group, in a Packaging Dive article about the long-term impacts of the pandemic.

This is the point where e-commerce really took off and when businesses had to find solutions to meet their customers’ needs, fast. That meant that considerably more packaging was needed for fulfillment. Up to that point, boxes were made largely for retail, but in the new age of e-commerce it was shipping that mattered more. The other element that changed was the size of the orders, which dropped from more items to fewer, but sent out more frequently.

At the same time, people also began to order a lot more takeout meals. This is where all those food delivery apps gained their substantial followings, and from a packaging standpoint, it opened the door to more innovations like tamper-evident containers that helped protect the quality of food.

But, with all this demand for packaging, an important question has come up: what happens after we open the package?

“The increasing use of single-use delivery packaging made the amount of waste more obvious to consumers and thus the call for more sustainable container options,” says Christ. The materials that are going into packaging have become more sustainable, another factor driving different approaches and innovations.

One example of this comes from Starbucks, reports Packaging World. The coffee giant has partnered with a Finnish company to make cups for cold drinks in their cafés in the U.K. from compostable materials. The upside of these cups is that they can do away with the plastic-lined paper cups that cannot easily be recycled. What remains to be confirmed is how well these cups can hold the liquids, avoiding leakage or condensation.

Another interesting company to highlight is London, U.K. startup Notpla, which has partnered with Just Eat to introduce plastic-free, seaweed-coated takeaway food boxes. Now it is scaling operations to the wider foodservice industry with its fully biodegradable and compostable solution, writes James Darley for Sustainability Magazine.

Changes to one of the most popular condiments could also be coming, reports Darley. Kraft Heinz’s ketchup bottles use a cap that is not easy to recycle because of the multiple materials it uses. But Heinz is working on a fix whereby the caps will be made using a single type of recyclable plastic.

Technology in the industry is also providing new solutions and possibilities for how we receive the goods that we want. Like just about everything else today, we can’t talk about the innovations in packaging unless we include AI in the discussion. AI is helping to improve almost every step of packaging, from the supply chain to quality control and ultimately to the options available for the actual packaging itself.

We all love it when something is made especially for us (or at least looks like it was made especially for us). And that is what AI can offer to manufacturers. Let’s say you live in New England and you are a Boston Red Sox fan; AI could allow for a quick and targeted design change to packaging in your area to include “Let’s go Red Sox” if the team is in the World Series, then quickly revert back after the season ends, or better yet change to “Champs” if the baseball team wins the series.

Packaging done well not only makes the most of the latest innovations; it also uses elements that intersect with our psyches. For instance, the color of a package can impact how we react to what’s inside. Warm colors like red, orange, and yellow can bring out feelings of excitement, happiness, and warmth. Likewise blue, green, and purple conjure feelings of calmness, nature, and royalty.

Then there is what the package feels like when touched. And this makes a lot of sense when you think that after seeing the package, the most important impression for people is what a package feels like when it is handled and opened. Creating a positive tactile experience can hinge on how smooth a package is or, for that matter, how rough it may feel. These psychological forces can strengthen the initial experience of a company’s product and help establish brand loyalty.

“The more you get to know your customers, the more you get to know their preferences,” says Ben Voyer, Cartier Chair Professor of Behavioural Sciences in an article for London Packaging Week. “The key is to build an offering of what directly reflects those preferences.”

Bringing together these elements into packaging can create something that transcends the form and makes a lasting mark in pop culture. Say the name ‘Cracker Jack’ and you almost instantly picture the red, white, and blue box with the sailor on the cover and a dog at his feet. That image dates to 1919 when it was first introduced (the candy itself came about circa 1896). The packaging seems simple, but it works. To further the treat’s childlike appeal, the package makes the most of bright colors and a fun curly font.

It also tugs on the nostalgia strings, not just because we think back to getting the prize out of the box as a kid but because that same basic image has endured through several generations; we have something that we can share with our grandparents.

There are also other ways to appeal to an audience through packaging, like exclusivity. Tiffany and Co. has been known since 1845 for its blue packaging, as Mladen Milosevic describes for DesignRush. In this case, the packaging really starts with that distinctive blue hue. The color, a robin’s-egg blue, was trademarked in 1998 for the company’s exclusive use. Psychologically, the blue hue evokes a sense of security and safety but also a sense of mystery, which brings us back to that exciting feeling of wanting to know what’s inside—because if it’s from Tiffany’s, it’s probably going to be nice.

Taking this one step further in the early 20^th century, the company developed its iconic little blue box. The materials of the box are the medium that exudes exclusivity and status by including touches like a blue suede back and a box that is made from custom paper that carries a distinct weight and texture to set it apart in the competitive luxury jewelry market. Then there is the understated name printed on top in a further refined touch.

If we move from luxurious exclusivity to more mass appeal, there is of course the funky little box with its funky little figure inside. Funko Pop! vinyl figure boxes work by leaving nothing to the imagination. For this company, it starts with the figures, such as sports stars or movie characters, which are petite yet larger than life. But the real accomplishment is that the box itself makes people, ironically, not want to open it. It’s the total package that completes the consumer experience. To reinforce the collectable experience, the number of each figure is displayed prominently on the top right of the box, and some will contain a sticker indicating a limited release. And then there’s the big window that displays the figure to nearly 360 degrees. The packaging brings that extra punch through a combination of colour and the standard cube shape, making it fun to handle, stack, and of course, display for collectors.

Companies are always aiming to leave a lasting mark on their customers and there is no better way to represent a brand than the choices that go into the packaging of their product. Far from just something that is needed for protection during shipping, well-designed packaging can create a direct link between the values of the company and its consumers every time they see the product—even before they open it.

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“If you were out there, you would just see pristine blue ocean,” says Matthias Egger, the head of Environmental and Social Affairs at The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit developing technologies to rid the oceans of plastic. Speaking to CNN, he compares the patch to the night sky. “If you look up at night, you see all those white dots, that’s essentially what you see in the garbage patch. It’s not that dense but there are a lot of them. You start seeing more and more plastic the longer you look.”

How did we end up with 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean? A big part of the problem lies in the fact that we produce about 460 million tons of plastic every year, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Of all this plastic, only about nine percent is recycled. And it’s only getting worse—by 2060, global plastic production is expected to triple.

Take a quick look around your room, and you’ll see that many everyday items are made of plastic or contain plastic components. But plastic poses a significant environmental problem because it doesn’t break down. Instead, it shatters into tiny pieces called microplastics, which are now in the oceans and in marine life that consumes them—and, ultimately, in us.

This is a troubling outcome, and more people are recognizing the urgency of the issue. The question is, what can be done to mitigate the environmental damage caused by plastic?

There are several approaches to either extract plastic waste or prevent it from impacting the environment. One emerging idea is converting plastic waste into energy.

That’s what a lab at Rice University in Houston is exploring. Using a process called rapid flash Joule heating, they heat plastic to 3,100 degrees Kelvin (about 5,120 degrees Fahrenheit) in just four seconds. This causes the hydrogen to evaporate from the plastics. “The main form of hydrogen used today is ‘gray hydrogen’ which is produced by steam-methane reforming, a method that generates a lot of carbon dioxide,” James Tour, professor of chemistry, materials science and nanoengineering, tells Rice University News. “Demand for hydrogen will likely skyrocket over the next few decades, so we can’t keep making it the same way we have up until now if we’re serious about reaching net zero emissions by 2050.”

Other researchers are focusing on the first stage of plastic production and how to make plastics easier to recycle. Dr. Elisabeth Prince, assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of Waterloo in Canada, is investigating how to create plastics that can degrade and be more easily recycled. The challenge is that plastics are made with permanent bonds that are resistant to heat, so they can’t be recycled using traditional methods that involve melting and remolding. Instead of changing recycling infrastructure, Prince’s team is working to alter the materials themselves so they can be remolded without compromising their properties. This process could also be applied to rubber tires, epoxy coatings, and elastic bands, helping to reduce landfill waste.

While these technological advances show promise, the true solution to plastic waste lies in addressing how our consumer society contributes to it. For decades, the consumer model has been to buy, use, and discard products. This “linear economy” model has been in place since the Industrial Revolution. With advances in manufacturing, we can make more products like cars and smartphones, but we haven’t changed our approach to handling the materials we use. We continue to extract raw materials from the Earth or harvest them, turn them into products, and dispose of them when they’re no longer useful.

Plastics are well-suited for this linear model. They are lightweight, flexible, and versatile, making them ideal for manufacturers. They’re also cheaper and more durable than many alternatives, which makes them appealing to consumers. However, once these plastic products reach the end of their lifecycle, they pose long-lasting environmental challenges.

The good news is that the circular economy approach offers a solution. In a circular economy, products are diverted from landfills and their lifespan is extended, getting us closer to a sustainable economy.

When discussing the circular economy and plastics, the first thought often turns to recycling. Can’t we just melt down plastics and recycle them to keep them out of landfills? While researchers at the University of Waterloo are making great strides in this area, the current structure of plastics presents limitations. How can we produce products and recycle them in a truly circular way?

After plastics are emptied from a recycling bin, they’re typically hauled to recycling centers, sorted by machines and people, and then sent to factories that break them down. However, current recycling processes cannot fully break down plastics, which is why we still face significant plastic waste.

But some promising advances are underway. For example, pyrolysis is a process where plastics are heated to 500 degrees Celsius without oxygen, which avoids combustion. The result is bio-oil liquids, bio-char solids, and syngas, all of which can be used for other purposes.

Pyrolysis is one method in a field known as advanced recycling, which is growing rapidly. In 2022, the market for advanced recycling technologies was valued at $270 million and it is projected to grow to more than $9 billion by 2031.

Brightmark Inc., for example, has set up a plant in Indiana that uses pyrolysis to process waste, primarily converting it into oil for fuel. Critics argue that this approach is not the best for the environment, as it still reinforces our dependence on fossil fuels. “The benefit of recycling comes when you return materials into the production cycle, which reduces the demand for virgin resources,” says Veena Singla, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council to Yale Environment 360. Still, many companies worldwide are planning pyrolysis plants to help combat plastic pollution. Ideally, the oil byproduct will be used to create new plastic, promoting circularity in the production cycle.

Sadly, there are no simple answers to the plastic waste problem. While technology may provide some solutions, the real solution will come when we fully commit to changing how we view and use the products that surround us.

The post Rethinking Plastic Waste Solutions<p class="company">New Ideas for a Circular Economy</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

This change has been accelerating and it’s no coincidence that, in recent decades, population growth and an escalating demand for goods and services have led to a sharp increase in energy use, resulting in a higher collective carbon footprint. Annual global greenhouse gas emissions have surged by 50 percent over the past 30 years. Plastic pollution has also increased, resulting in social and economic costs totalling US $600 billion at the end of 2023.

As the 2023 report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change pointed out, as captured in the Washington Post: “Humanity will run up against ‘hard limits’ to adaptation. Temperatures will get too high to grow many staple crops. Droughts will become so severe that even the strongest water conservation measures can’t compensate. In a world that has warmed roughly 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit)—where humanity appears to be headed—the harsh physical realities of climate change will be deadly for countless plants, animals, and people.”

Here’s what we know: If we continue the way we’re going, we can’t maintain Earth’s ecosystems or life as we know it. And if harmful processes persist unchanged, many experts predict that we will run out of fossil fuels, the atmosphere will be damaged irreparably, and numerous animal species will become extinct.

Sustainable manufacturing is critical to alter the negative direction our global climate seems to be taking, because industry and the environment are connected. There are also myriad business cases to consider, because adopting clean practices will cut costs and waste. And in this vein, companies can respond to changing consumer preferences who want to support planet-friendly ventures. Manufacturers can safeguard their reputations and promote long-term business viability. The big-picture win is that sustainable manufacturing addresses global issues like climate change and plastic pollution.

That means looking at new ways to manufacture and asking ourselves, ‘what we are going to do?’ As the age-old saying goes, “necessity is the mother of invention.” When you have brilliant chemists working on some of the manufacturing industry’s most pressing challenges, you can get results that could change everything.

Today, the innovation taking place in the manufacturing sector is something to really get excited about. Chemists in a lab at Rice University in Houston, Texas have developed a new method that could transform the synthesis of high-quality, solid-state materials into a much greener process. The technique is called flash-within-flash Joule heating (FWF) that delivers a cleaner, faster, and more sustainable manufacturing process. The findings of the lab work were published in the journal Nature Chemistry in August 2024.

FWF is turning heads because conventional processes used to build a complex product from basic components take a lot of time and energy. And, beyond time and energy, these processes usually produce harmful byproducts and waste. But FWF makes gram-scale production of a variety of diverse compounds possible in mere seconds. This translates into significant reductions in energy, water consumption, and greenhouse gas emission—over 50 percent, according to the Rice University report.

Not only this does provide a potential new way to push the chemistry involved in manufacturing forward, the promising savings of the FWF technique set a new standard for sustainable manufacturing. That’s in large part due to how the process works. It is based on finding a quicker way to heat things up by passing a current through moderately resistive material. By doing this, researchers were able to quickly heat the material to more than 3,000 degrees Celsius (over 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit). At this temperature, they were able to transform the material into other substances, all while reducing the energy needed and environment-damaging gasses produced.

This breakthrough builds on previous experiments at the Rice lab that focused on waste disposal and upcycling applications with flash Joule heating. And the good news is that, when compared to commercially available materials, it appears that FWF products can offer comparable, or even superior, electronic characteristics and performance.

The process seems to have the most direct impact on manufacturing nanoelectronic devices. In broad strokes, nanoelectronics refers to devices on the scale of a few nanometers—approaching the physical limits of ‘small’ due to very nature of matter—where the efficiency of the energy used and the calculating power they produce can be optimized. Our ability to reliably manufacture devices on this scale would be a game changer. The applications would be far-reaching, benefiting computing, communications, and health sciences, and probably so many more fields than we can imagine now.

Ultimately, all these advances will also impact our capabilities to explore space. Nanotechnology and nanodevices offer the prospect of getting more out of smaller—and importantly, lighter—materials. Nano wiring, for example, can reduce the weight of wiring aboard spacecraft. While that may not sound like a big deal, when it comes to space travel, every reduction in weight can increase the overall capacity of the craft.

Beyond this specific breakthrough, there are also other examples of manufacturers finding ways to make existing products more sustainable. Among these is manufacturing giant 3M. The company has more than 55,000 production lines which include ubiquitous products like Scotch tape and Post-it notes. With a manufacturing base that is so broad, materials like carbon, water, and plastics are all used prolifically. And while the company has a long history in manufacturing many products from these materials, it is also looking at what can be done to reduce the impact of manufacturing on the environment. One example is bubble wrap.

As Sustainability Magazine reports, 3M took a hard look at this product and found a way to make the once plastic product out of recycled paper that can be stretched and wrapped around a breakable item and then shipped. Once the item is delivered, the paper can easily be recycled like any paper product.

Another path toward sustainability in manufacturing is rethinking not only how things are made, but how they are consumed and can be used again. Companies across many different industry sectors are transitioning toward more circular business models where resources are used more efficiently. Projections from the U.N. Environment Programme suggest that by 2040, this shift could create a savings of more than US $4.5 trillion.

In a circular economy, as explained in this 2024 Science Direct paper, products at the end-of-life stage or byproducts of manufacturing can be used in different ways to create different products. This reduces the need to extract raw materials from the Earth, and it can help businesses in manufacturing by reducing waste and improving efficiency. An example of putting this into practice comes from Belgium where an original equipment manufacturer keeps ownership of their products by renting them out to consumers, particularly those who could not afford to own them outright and then retrieve them once they have reached end-of-life stage. The company, BSH, established 10-year rentals at a discounted rate and picks the appliances up once they reach the end of the rental contract to be used in future manufacturing.

Electric vehicle batteries are also excellent candidates for the circular approach to manufacturing. Right now, while the batteries help power cleaner cars, the process that goes into making them is not that clean. One of the bigger reasons for that is the mining of the raw materials required to make them. Recycling could be a game-changer here.

BMW is planning to do this by building a Cell Recycling Competence Center in Germany, Auto Week reports. The goal is to create an automated mechanical approach to recycling. Markus Fallböhmer, Senior Vice President of Battery Production at BMW, talks about the importance of this: “The new Cell Recycling Competence Center brings another element to our in-house expertise. From development and pilot production to recycling, we are creating a closed loop for battery cells, taking advantage of the short distances between our Competence Centers in Bavaria.”

But these are still early days for EV batteries in general and while innovations are starting to take shape, they will not be fully realized until that critical mass of consumers is reached. Brandon Tracy, a former mineral policy analyst with the Congressional Research Service, talks about the potential of recycling EV batteries in America. “What I do love about the whole EV battery recycling conversation: how often do we start a conversation in corporate America with, ‘How are we gonna recycle this thing?’” Tracy tells Trellis (formerly GreenBiz). “It’s a beautiful realization that we’ve screwed up in the past, not starting at the lifecycle and saying, ‘What are we gonna do here?’”

Innovation to make manufacturing more sustainable is taking place. What will drive it further is the need that comes from both inside the industry to uplevel their processes and from customers expecting these solutions.

The post Sustainable Manufacturing Matters<p class="company">Benefits for Business and the Environment</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

And over the last 20 years or so, we have seen another evolution taking place, as machines that have been in use for years have become highly sophisticated and are now being further enhanced through 3D printing and AI to bring something that manufacturing has not really excelled at until now—customization.

For the longest time, manufacturing has been able to reach the largest number of people by keeping things generic. If something is simple enough, more people can apply it to their needs, even though it may not be the best fit. But now, thanks to a combination of advanced tools, computing, and modern concepts of design, customization for individual consumers on a mass scale is not only possible, but highly sought out.

A fun example of just how unique and individualized a product can be is Nik Lee Industrial Design’s bubble boots. What kid doesn’t like blowing bubbles?

The design company creates shoes that come from kids blowing bubbles. Here’s how it works: they start by scanning a child’s foot through a smartphone app. From there, the child blows bubbles through a straw that they aim at their computer microphone. The bubbles are digitized on the shoe design. The noise that comes from the mic moves the bubbles around on the shoes and once the child is happy (or out of breath), the model is sent to a 3D print farm and a real-world shoe is created—exactly as the child designed it.

“The prompts were refined until I could control the base volume of the shoe. The design of each shoe will be different, so the base design needs to be simple. I was also looking for a silhouette that can be slipped on and off but still offered support,” the designer notes on the company website Nikleedesign.com. Most parents appreciate a supportive shoe that is easy to slip on and off and is fun to wear!

One of the recent changes to the design component of manufacturing is what’s known as computational design. Up to this point, design was largely a passive process: a designer applies their knowledge, skill, and a bit of intuition to create a design using computer aided design (CAD) to help create a product, part, or any other given widget. And this has been very effective, except that it was limited by the time and resources available to the designer.

Computational design is a method that combines algorithms and parameters to create new designs. In essence, that CAD process is supercharged with computer-coded language to create designs or analyze existing ones over and over very quickly. This allows designers to explore hundreds of options and create unique solutions, ultimately opening up new possibilities that might not have been discovered through traditional design. It also cuts costs as the computer does the work. This means manufacturers can make unique products for much less, much faster.

But all of this would not be possible without 3D printing. It’s the 3D printing that can produce many unique parts simultaneously from these computational designs without molds or tools. This is what 3D printing can uniquely provide as opposed to traditional manufacturing techniques.

These advancements can have a particularly important impact on medical products, where one size never fits all. A great example of how this design and manufacturing technology is having an impact started in Colorado where a young first-grader broke his arm. As with many people in that situation, a plaster cast was made to heal the bone. But a first-grader is never really great at keeping things clean and this includes a plaster cast, which he got wet. Unfortunately, this ended up causing an infection and permanent scarring on his arm.

This boy happened to be in a program run by Diana Hall, a chemical engineer. Hearing this story, she felt that there had to be a better way to heal bones. Hall developed a conceptual plastic brace through 3D printing that was both waterproof and guaranteed not to break. This is the origin story of her company ActivArmor, which is the only manufacturer of waterproof casts in the U.S.

The company uses light-scanning and 3D imaging to map the contours of a limb as well as the injuries that require support. From there the process is not unlike making Lego bricks, with high-temperature thermosetting plastic shaped to fit the need. This can include scars and burns as well. In a 2019 article for the Florida Times Union, Hall says about ActivArmor casts: “It’s not going to melt,” and, “you can break every bone in your body before you break this.” The casts and splints can also be used for sprains and carpal tunnel syndrome, and they can be worn on the job and in the shower so people can be active as they heal. Now NFL players have been able to save their careers by speeding up healing time.

The other impressive thing about this product is that now, instead of keeping a wide variety of splints on hand, healthcare providers just need a 3D printer which they can use to create the exact type of brace that a patient needs.

A very different industry is also starting to see the benefits of customization—automotive manufacturing. In Europe, Twikit, a Belgian company that specializes in customized 3D printing products and digital products, is working with BMW Group to customize accessories of cars like the Mini. These include indicator inlays, also called side scuttles, and trims for the passenger side of the interior, LED door sills, and LED door projectors. Customized touches include a light-projecting “welcome (driver name)” on the ground as they open the door. These details can even be initiated by the consumers, allowing them to change and exchange parts as their preferences change—like colors, patterns, and icons, all of which create a completely individual and unique experience for the owner.

And we are really just entering this phase of manufacturing. By using a data-driven approach to design, companies will be able to offer consumers products that can be specifically tailored to their lifestyle and needs. Further, data from the lifecycle of a product can help shape how it can be better designed to last and adapt to a user’s needs over time.

Take a house for example. Data about environmental impact—like wind, sun and rainfall—on a particular house can be used to improve its design and efficiency. Traffic noise can be factored into noise reduction, roofs can be shaped to optimize solar panels and rain collection, or ducts can be shaped and positioned to maximize heating and air conditioning airflow.

As manufacturing and new technology breakthroughs like AI continue to become more intertwined in how we design and produce goods, who knows what else may be possible?

The post Our 3D Future<p class="company">Custom Design from Shoes to Vehicles</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

However, finding more efficient practices and thus, better products, is not always easy. That’s why many companies have turned to the latest in machine learning and advanced software to gain an edge by improving and optimizing their processes.

But better technology does not come cheaply, and while larger firms can make substantial investments, many smaller ones cannot. So, what do you do when you know the competition benefits from the latest, costly software as part of their design process? The good news is that there is expertise out there to level the playing field for smaller manufacturers.

Good news for products
EAC Product Development Solutions, based in Minneapolis, has been transforming how companies design, manufacture, connect to, and service their products for almost 20 years.

“We’ll go in and help a company, whether through a few web meetings or onsite, for a two- to four-week engagement to help them understand where their problems are in their product development cycle,” explains Chris Woerther, President of the PTC business unit at EAC. “We identify solutions to help them improve and get strong.”

EAC works to solve problems, utilizing software that helps companies develop strategies and finding ways to innovate, optimize, and ultimately create better manufacturing processes and products. That includes using augmented reality (AR) technology to guide customers down the right manufacturing path while bridging gaps in skills. (Note that the U.S. Census Bureau has estimated a potential 2.1 million unfilled positions in manufacturing by 2030 because of the lack of skilled labor.)

AR can train employees, check product quality, and improve accuracy and safety in operations with visual interactions in real time.

For example, workers can use a phone, tablet, or headset to manipulate computer-generated objects in a 3D space, seeing everything as if it were right in front of them. In this way, they can work alongside a remote teammate or follow written or video instructions for repairs and other jobs.

All of this starts with listening to customer needs and challenges. As a plus, the team at EAC knows what it’s like to be a smaller player in the industry. The company’s story starts in 1996 when President and CEO Chris Hathaway left his job with a larger company to start his own firm. Against this backdrop, the EAC team understands that, more often than not, it’s the smaller shops that have innovative ideas, but they are also the ones who are frequently challenged by the resources needed to turn those ideas into reality.

Vital move
The company first offered straight engineering services, but it wasn’t long before Hathaway realized how much impact software could have on product design and finding the efficiencies that make a difference. Now EAC guides companies across all sectors in “cool projects,” from aerospace and transportation to leading-edge medical devices.

An important move for EAC was partnering with PTC, a software company that manages data through a product’s lifecycle. “Keeping data up to date and synced with your product is critical and often a very big pain point for companies of all sizes,” Woerther says. “The partnership was the start of a product lifecycle management system and is the foundation we’ve grown from through the years. Unfortunately, only the bigger companies can take advantage of that. We were adamant about finding ways to help all companies through their entire product development cycle.”

This includes applying IoT (Internet of Things) technology and additive manufacturing to support the 3D printing capabilities of Formlabs and INTAMSYS. EAC also provides clients with service lifecycle management through the Arbortext publishing system, which is used to deliver high-quality information to users about a product’s capabilities.

“The whole point is, we’re always looking for ways to help a company through their entire cycle,” says Woerther. A great example of EAC’s impact is the team’s work with a multi-location manufacturer of custom automation equipment, transforming how its products are developed and tracked.

As Woerther explains, “They relied on paper books, and that was a challenge—not only creating them but keeping them up to date with everything from design to logging issues.” The manufacturer would mark them up on the shop floor, but the updates would not consistently get back to engineering.

There was a significant benefit in closing this efficiency gap, and EAC helped the company to better capture and make the most of its data. “There were many steps in there, but probably the biggest value to them was enabling their builders on the manufacturing floor by getting digital tablets into their hands and giving them digital access to CAD data.”

It might go without saying, but the customer no longer had to produce paper books. The overhaul saved on costs and time while establishing a true closed-loop change process in the design and build lifecycle.

“After these changes,” Woerther says, “when a builder finds a problem now, they digitally log that issue. They can even draw and mark up the problem, make suggestions, and then track and create tasks to ensure that the quality continues to improve.” Analyzing the data and applying the improvements to the process added up to savings of more than a million dollars annually.

Stories like this have gotten EAC noticed and awarded for having “the most impact in digital transformation at scale” by its partner PTC. EAC will also be part of the International Manufacturing Technology Show, or IMTS, in September, where the team will demo its solutions.

A valuable partner
In business since the late 1990s, EAC has seen the market change. Through upturns and downturns, persistence and ingenuity have paid off. During the recession of 2009, many competitors shuttered and clients were also impacted, but EAC continued to find value for them.

“When people are having trouble, the value we offer becomes even more important,” says Woerther. “There were a lot of players early on, but we outperformed and outshined many of those and are one of the top PTC partners in North America today.”

The demand for what EAC provides is only increasing with the emergence of AI as manufacturers become aware of the need to establish a clear digital thread throughout a product’s lifecycle. This includes getting the right information at the right time to the right people.

Impact of AI
Todd Liebenow, Senior Applications Engineer with EAC, talks about the potential impacts of the generative component of AI in manufacturing. “It’s taking intelligence that’s based on requirements for parts and assemblies and actually driving toward an optimal solution that includes the process for manufacturing,” he explains. “For us, it’s about how we can help companies make parts lighter, faster, and cheaper but still satisfy the design requirements.”

With that aim, EAC works through generative design to look at all the requirements for parts and develop an optimal design. “What you specify might not necessarily be manufacturable in the traditional sense, like subtractive manufacturing. But through our partnership with Formlabs, we can help you get there.”

In a hypercompetitive industry, EAC can help smaller manufacturers stand out and turn their innovative designs into high-performance products.

“I challenge people to expand beyond what they know,” Woerther says of communicating what digital transformation can do for companies. “It’s sometimes hard to understand the benefit of product life management technology services. There are so many things out there that can help their business get better. Don’t assume that any one way is the best way.”

The post Leveraging Big Data for Big Gains<p class="company">EAC Product Development Solutions</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Early innovations in the field were driven by the need for precise positioning, allowing for more adherence to medical imagery, especially for the biopsy of brain tumors, but also for orthopaedic procedures and prosthetic hip replacements. And as communication technology ramped up in the 1990s, the notion of remote surgery started to push this innovation as well.

Today’s robotic surgery systems make use of advanced computing with custom software, dedicated signal filters and precision hand controllers to interpret a surgeon’s movements at a workstation and drive the robot in the operating theatre, all in real time. The surgeon directs the movement but isn’t physically performing the surgery with the surgical tools. While they’re still very much in control of the process, surgeons don’t have to go through the same demanding physical exertion, reducing physician fatigue and burnout and improving quality of care.

Early pioneers of the technology, like Dr. Fredrick Moll from the Stanford Research Institute, developed robotics for laparoscopy, which are procedures that require minimal incisions often performed around the abdominal cavity. The American College of Surgeons bulletin notes how Moll helped to expand the types of surgeries that robots could assist with. “Dr. Moll thought robotic surgery would offer more degrees of freedom to open, close or rotate the instrument than a straight shafted laparoscopic instrument would,” Dr. T. Sloane Guy told the College Bulletin in a May 2023 piece titled Robotic Surgery Is Here to Stay – and So Are Surgeons.

Guy is director of minimally invasive and robotic cardiac surgery at the Georgia Heart Institute where nearly 20,000 robotic surgeries have been carried out. As he put it, “There is a quiet tsunami of robotic surgery headed our way.”

But, like many new technologies, people were skeptical at first about robotic surgery and what could be done with it. Early on, some surgeons wanted more control over the operating field than what the robots could provide. The robotic prostatectomy, where part, or all, of the prostate is removed to treat prostate cancer or an enlarged prostate, was the first procedure to gain wide acceptance.

In 2018, the Journal of The Society of Laparoscopic & Robotic Surgeons published a piece, Origins of Robotic Surgery: From Skepticism to Standard of Care, where analysis showed that robotic assisted surgery decreased blood loss and reduced hospital stay times among prostatectomy patients.

Now, Intuitive Surgical, a leading global producer of surgical robotic products headquartered in California, estimates more than 12 million robotic surgery procedures have been performed with Intuitive systems. Further, an analysis published in JAMA Network Open in 2020, Trends in the Adoption of Robotic Surgery for Common Surgical Procedures, found that robotic surgical procedures entered into the Michigan Surgical Quality Collaborative registry increased from 1.8 to 15.1 percent from 2012 to 2018.

The types of surgeries have expanded considerably as well, with robots used for cancer, cardiac, and gynaecological surgery, and general ones like gastric bypass, hernia repairs, and gallbladder surgery.

The shift has also transformed medical curricula as residency programs make robotics part of their training, largely driven by demand of the residents themselves. Alisa Coker, the director of robotic surgery education at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told Wired magazine in an October 2023 story, Meet the Next Generation of Doctors – and Their Surgical Robots, “Some residency programs didn’t see the benefit of teaching their surgery residents robotics. But over the last six years, residents started demanding to be taught robotics… They were asking that we prepare a curriculum to teach them.”

Coker took that demand and turned it into a program that includes robotic simulators, which are used to teach the skills needed for robotic surgery. Most students now practice on simulators and assist on related cases.

While more surgeons are using robotics in surgery, the technology itself continues to advance. The three emerging trends in the future of robotic surgery are miniaturization, telepresence, and the impact of AI, according to the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering report of November 2023, The Future of Robotic Surgery: 3 Trends to Look For.

The top trend, miniaturization, involves micro-robots in surgery. Microbot Medical has recently expanded its surgical robot manufacturing capabilities and introduced the Liberty single-use endovascular robot system. Bearing an uncanny resemblance to Sherlock Holmes’ double-brimmed hat, the little robot can be hand-held and used remotely for neurovascular, cardiovascular, and peripheral vascular procedures. Basically, this mini robot can carry out intricate procedures targeting blood vessels. It also happens to be disposable and can cut back the requirement for larger pieces of equipment in the OR.

Telepresence—the option to remotely perform a surgery—broadens what can be done from further distances. And it doesn’t get much more remote than space. A robot aboard the International Space Station recently completed a surgery demo in space while the surgeons who remotely performed the demonstration were about 250 miles away in Lincoln, Nebraska. Not only does this have implications for space travel, but it can be used in remote places that may not have surgeons but could have robots.

The hurdle, however, with this kind of remote surgery is the delay between the actions of the surgeons and the movement of the robots, which increases with distance. Dr. Michael Jobst, a colorectal surgeon who was part of the space surgery demo, talked to CNN about these critical delays for the piece Surgery in space: Tiny remotely operated robot completes first simulated procedure at the space station. “In a live patient, if there is bleeding, it’s my job to stop that bleeding immediately. But to have an 800 to 850 millisecond lag between seeing the blood loss then doing something about it, I mean effectively that’s like… saying, ‘okay, one Mississippi, two,’ and then I get to go ahead and fix the problem,” said Jobst. “Five seconds would be an eternity in surgery, and a split second or half a second is going be significant. So, this was a big challenge.”

As CNN noted, the robot carrying out this surgery is called spaceMIRA, a two-pound compact robot that has two tools to grab and cut. It is specialized for weight and size to go into space where its Earth counterpart is three inches longer with a similar design.

The other major enhancement that will propel what robots can do in the future is AI and machine learning. Currently, AI is used to help recognize patterns and detect objects through inspecting digital images or videos. This goes a long way toward improving the diagnostic process. As the technology develops, the aim is to assist surgeons in real-time decisions as well as evaluate the risks and benefits of the surgery and postoperative complications. In the actual mechanics of an operation, AI could also perform simple tasks through the robot, like closing a port site when the device is removed or tying a suture.

Beyond this, AI could expand to artificial implant technology and programming that could allow someone who is profoundly deaf to hear.

With all this potential, some ethical questions are being asked, like who would be held responsible if an AI-led surgery results in a bad outcome? Is it the doctor for using the AI; is it the programmer who created the software behind the AI?

These questions are leading to the bigger ones for the medical profession where robotic surgery is involved. Is it ultimately human error that results in the negative consequences of surgery when the issue is a technical failure? Should humans be limited to the planning and decision making but physically stay out of the operating room?

We are still a long way from the scenario of a robot surgeon walking into an operating room to perform the surgery, but the decisions we are making now are shaping what that future will look like. It may come down to a question of trust. For something as intimate and life-altering as surgery, are we prepared to let the robots do the work or will we always want to have the human touch?

The post AI in the OR?<p class="company">Advances in Robotic Surgery</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.