ATS Systems
In a 21st century, post-COVID economy, automating business processes will become not merely a production concern but one of safety. Yet automation presents challenges of its own – namely, affordability, practicality, and necessity.
iMFLUX
In the manufacturing sector, a new technology comes along every few years that genuinely turns the industry on its head. In this case, the company leading the way in transforming the future of plastic injection molding is iMFLUX, Inc.
Advanced Test and Automation
As the world approaches the second anniversary of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Anthony Khoraych looks back on the past months as both a challenge and a once-in-a-lifetime learning experience for Advanced Test and Automation (ATA).
Arshon Technology
Arshon Technology provides cost-effective electronic design services to customers in a wide range of industries around the world. As an end-to-end provider, this Ontario-based business handles everything from prototype design, testing, and validation all the way through to commercialization and mass production.
Cassidy 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 or maybe triple the price if you add in all the unseen costs.”
CCRM
Established 10 years ago to leverage scientific strengths in regenerative medicine in Canada, CCRM continues to assert Canadian leadership in the life sciences. With a particular focus on the promise of cell and gene therapy, the organization’s goal is to not only treat symptoms of diseases, but to cure them.
Genecis Bioindustries
The potential of plastic production at Genecis Bioindustries Inc. is astounding. The company is creating high-value plastics from food waste that compete in function with oil-based plastics, but are environmentally friendly, composted within a month, and degraded in a year. Genecis is building a circular economy by helping businesses use green PHA plastics in agriculture, packaging, and food services, and reducing the amount of plastic – approximately 18 billion pounds of it – that ends up in oceans every year.
IDP Group
The IDP Group has done a major pivot, with a new focus on steel-based pre-fabricated construction solutions that might help address housing needs in rural or isolated locales. The company has also embraced an innovative manufacturing methodology that aims to “turn construction into Advanced Manufacturing,” as Operations Manager and Partner Hamed Asl puts it.
Lorik Tool & Automation Inc.
Automation and robotics may seem like recent inventions to some but the reality is that several earlier generations laid the foundations needed to bring about today’s high-level technology. Lorik Tool & Automation is a North American trailblazer on this front, having supplied industries across the globe with the best custom automation and inspection machinery for the past thirty-three years.
Systecon
Without a doubt, COVID-19 has presented companies with both hurdles and opportunities. For Ohio-based Systecon, the pandemic was a chance to grow and explore bold, innovative ways of reaching out and interacting with clients.
General Control Systems
Once one of Albany, New York’s best-kept secrets, General Control Systems, Inc. is now breaking onto the country’s technology scene with a fresh new look and a renewed commitment to its own and its clients’ success.
The Evolution of Mobile Technology
From being ‘just a phone’ to compact entertainment centers and portable offices we carry in our pockets, mobile devices have come a long way.
Giving Silicon A Run For Its Conductivity
For decades now, silicon has been a trusted material in electronics manufacturing due in large part to its use in the creation of semiconductors. Silicon is used among myriad types of electronics today of varying complexity and size, from computers to handheld devices, thanks to its ability to act as both a conductor of electricity and as an insulator (i.e. the role of a semiconductor in a piece of machinery).
Seeing 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 yet, maybe you’ve driven a Tesla and used the autonomous driving feature.
How Human-Robot Collaboration is Shaping the Workplace
Why is automation, the process of introducing robotics into industry and making processes more machine-driven, so often spoken of in anxious tones?
Alliance Automation
American robotics systems manufacturer Alliance Automation offers automation solutions to a multitude of sectors. The company began operations in August 2008 when President and CEO Doug Wenninger, wanting to take advantage of an opportunity he saw within the market to branch out and offer automation to underserved industries, left a Sales Manager position at another automation company to form his own.
Adaptec Solutions
It can be challenging for businesses to establish a company philosophy dedicated to putting employees and customers first, particularly when continual growth and acquisition are essential for success and survival. Adaptec Solutions has managed to do both, and do them well, and is thriving under a strong and unified leadership team, an expanding business focus, and a name change.
Molded Precision Components
When historians look back on COVID-19, they’ll see nothing but change – in lives, relationships, politics, power, and education. And in industry, where a Canadian company spots the obvious and then fixes it – bringing a whole 15,000 km supply chain in-house.
4D Systems
The words “robotic systems” conjure up many images. However, if you automatically think “job losses,” you won’t be alone, but it couldn’t be further from the truth: 4D Systems puts humans and robots together to benefit employees, companies, industry, and the world.
NGen
NGen’s mission has long involved strengthening the development of world-leading, advanced manufacturing capabilities in Canada through the promotion of technology, protecting the environment, and securing supply chains through funding and supporting industry clusters and Supercluster projects. Now NGen is turning its skills and knowledge to bolstering the manufacturing workforce’s future through education, awareness, and collaboration between various industries to address shared issues and interests.
International 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 that makes expertly-stitched custom textile products like parachutes turn a quickly mutating virus into an entrepreneurial success story? What’s more, how did ICP catapult to 143 percent revenue growth over three years and reach a place among Canada’s Top Growing Businesses on the coveted annual list by the Globe and Mail?
F&D Plastics
When the team at F&D Plastics says they take customer service to the next level, they’re not kidding. For more than 50 years, this innovative and resilient company has consistently produced high-performance custom colors, pre-cultured resins, specialty compounds and additive masterbatches at two advanced manufacturing plants, all while providing superior turnaround times and outstanding flexibility for a variety of customers across North America, Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean.
LasX Industries
LasX Industries, Inc., founded in 1998 in St. Paul, Minnesota, has new products, a new customer service initiative, and a new focus. When profiled April 2018 in Manufacturing in Focus magazine, LasX custom designed and manufactured industrial laser systems for materials processing. Since then, the company has been shaping its most popular ‘Engineer to Order’ platforms to a ‘Configure to Order’ product line to offer customers more competitive options with quicker order fulfillment—still customizable, and tailored to meet customer requirements.
Lin Engineering Inc.
Innovation is second nature at Lin Engineering Inc., where it has been built into the processes of company operations and integrated into the culture of the people who drive quality and performance without cease.
August Electronics
Celebrating an impressive 30-year anniversary this year, Calgary-based August Electronics attributes that longevity to not only producing quality high-tech industrial and consumer electronics, but fully embracing its customer-focused approach that puts clients first in all areas.
Eddyfi Technologies
Discovering outstanding efficiency is always a delight, especially when it comes to taking care of big-ticket assets. Eddyfi Technologies provides the technology needed to monitor and maintain peak performance for critical infrastructure around the world because losing money, risking lives, and harming the environment is not acceptable.
CRANE 1
At CRANE 1, customer service and safety are top priorities. And under the leadership of President and Chief Executive Officer Robert Vevoda, outstanding products – and an outstanding company culture to go with them – have kept the Miamisburg, Ohio-headquartered company growing and thriving.
A+ Group
A+ Group has been providing manufacturers with plastic and metal hardware for a quarter of a century. Armed with an extensive inventory and multiple distribution centers, the Marlboro, New Jersey-based business represents some of the world’s leading manufacturers including Fidlock, Bodypoint, Systemmag, Trimmers, and Winhigh, in addition to supplying a standard hardware line.
Ace Industries
Ace Industries, a family business based in Atlanta, Georgia, has a rich history that can be traced back to 1932. The focus on solving customer problems, instead of simply selling a product, has held true for three generations and this culture will be passed on to the next.
A World in Transition
The medical device market appears strong with great potential for growth, but consolidation, the rapid advancement of industry 4.0, the persistence of COVID and demographic changes taking place will all shape its development.
C-Axis Inc.
The manufacturing of medical devices takes exceptional care, quality and precision. C-Axis Inc. excels in all three as it builds exceptional critical-to-function components for the medical device industry.
ArtiFlex Manufacturing
From its Grand Rapids, Michigan headquarters, ArtiFlex Manufacturing, an innovative, vertically integrated enterprise, has big plans for growth based on partnerships with other businesses. The firm’s name—an amalgam of artisan and flexible—summarizes its unique approach to design and manufacturing, with the company organized into four groups devoted to innovation, tooling, automation, and manufacturing.
Priority Plastics Inc.
Technological advancements talk. After investing nearly $25 million in its people, products and equipment, Priority Plastics is making a statement in North America by introducing more advanced, recyclable industrial plastics solutions and advanced high-speed continuous-extrusion technology.
Inteplast Group
Every little bit helps when it comes to reducing carbon footprints and minimizing environmental impacts, especially for companies like Inteplast Group, the largest manufacturer of integrated plastics in North America.
Macrodyne Technologies
With over 30 years’ experience manufacturing custom heavy-duty hydraulic presses, Macrodyne Technologies is a recognized name and a vital part of the global supply chain. Not surprising, when it’s North America’s largest hydraulic press manufacturer.
Boston Conveyor & Automation
Boston Conveyor & Automation (BCA) proudly manufactures in the USA custom stainless-steel conveyor, custom engineered hard automation, integrated robotic picking, packing, and stacking systems that serve the food and beverage, pharmaceutical, and medical device industries. Based in the beautiful, historic village of Newburyport, on the coast of Massachusetts and strategically positioned within reach of the country’s robotic engineering epicenter in Boston, BCA works with many of the largest manufacturing companies across the USA.
MiQ Partners
In markets where speed and quality are of the essence, MiQ Partners provides intelligent fabrication, automation, and assembly technology to some of the world’s largest manufacturers in the medical device, aerospace, and consumables fabrication sectors.
Machining Tolerance Measurement Meets Industry 4.0
Metrology equipment manufacturers are increasingly adding Industry 4.0 features to instruments that measure machining tolerance. The goal is to improve accuracy, speed inspection times, enhance data collection and analysis, and lower verification costs.
Reinhausen Manufacturing
In a time when longevity of equipment and components is exceptional rather than expected, Reinhausen Manufacturing Inc. is a leader in an industry whose lifeblood is reliability, day and night, summer and winter, years on end: power transformers.
AGC Heat Transfer
Engineering, service expertise and domestic manufacturing make AGC Heat Transfer a leader in sanitary heat transfer solutions.
Barnum Mechanical
Barnum Mechanical Inc., a mechanical contractor and supplier specializing in sanitary process systems and piping, was founded by welder Tom Barnum in 1980. Barnum, having made his living in sanitary processing, felt he could offer more to the industry with his own approach.
Metro Compactor Services
If there is a secret to the success and longevity of Metro Compactor Service, Inc., it is that the family-run firm offers top-of-the-line waste and recycling equipment as well as ‘Super Service.’
IPS-Integrated Project Services (IPS)
Technically complex facilities with stringent performance and environmental controls require the brightest minds, innovative approaches, advanced technology, and a team that offers tangible design solutions.
GDI Adhesives
GDI Adhesives is a manufacturer of hot-melt and water-based pressure-sensitive adhesives located in Germantown, Wisconsin just north of Milwaukee and specializes in acoustic and partition, automotive, electronics, laminating and converting, tape and label, product assembly, packaging, and a variety of niche industries such as filter assembly and foam assembly. One relatively unique industry that is growing in popularity these days and with which GDI is involved is insect adhesives.
Adhesive Applications
Adhesive Applications is to adhesives what the ancient Greeks’ King Midas was to gold. Because, no matter where one turns in the twenty-first century, a large percentage of the world’s manufactured commodities are held together by myriad adhesive compounds. I spoke with this visionary team to learn more about just how they do it.
RegO® Products
With over a century of experience as a highly regarded global manufacturer of highly engineered flow control, RegO® Products has supported mission critical applications in the liquid propane, liquid natural gas, and industrial gas markets for a long time. The reason it is a trusted name is because it is deeply committed to investing in its own success.
HAHN Automation, Inc.
For decades, Germany’s reputation as a world leader in engineering and technology has remained unshakable. The HAHN Group from Rheinböllen, Germany, has taken innovative industrial automation and robotics solutions to the U.S. and worldwide.
Ramsey Winch
For almost 80 years, the Ramsey Winch Company continues to serve as a globally leading manufacturer of planetary gear winches and hoists, worm gear hydraulic and electric winches. And as the team themselves put it, when you want to work, they’re ready… and the winch will work!
Bell and Howell
As a next-generation service organization, Bell and Howell has been investing in the tools, technology, and training needed to help customers increase efficiency and reduce operational costs.
Zemarc Corporation
Zeke Zahid founded Zemarc Corporation in 1976 with a vision to bring only the best value-added products, services, and solutions to the fluid power market. Over the decades, the Los Angeles-based business has grown to become a global leader in industrial distribution, with branch offices throughout California and more than fifty employees with a combined 150 years’ experience in the fluid power and motion control industry.