The latest developments in space technology and manufacturing are happening within a new and exciting time for the space industry. In a piece for Frontiers titled, “Current Challenges and Opportunities for Space Technologies,” Guglielmo S. Aglietti defines the current period of consolidation of space technologies as “Space 4.0,” (also referred to as “New Space” as some companies enter the space sector for the first time). The space sector is seeing “changes of motivations, actors, and, indeed, technologies,” as more businesses jockey for position to offer the next, best innovations for spacefaring missions.

Space 4.0 doesn’t just apply to new businesses, but even to new ways of conducting business and exploration in space, such as tourism in space or mining of asteroids for materials.

For Brookings, Landry Signe and Hanna Dooley detail in “How space exploration is fuelling the Fourth Industrial Revolution” how space exploration and growth of the sector relates to what is referred to as the 4IR (4^th Industrial Revolution, or Industry 4.0), the next step in human and technological development that we are currently in. Signe and Dooley say that the disruptive effects of the ongoing 4IR on industry at large “have the potential to improve the quality of life for populations across the globe,” from fostering economic growth to combating various levels of inequality and reinventing and modernizing the current definitions of how we look at work, life, health, and more. The advancements of technologies like the blockchain, AI (artificial intelligence), 3D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and more all relate back to the further exploration and understanding of space.

Global efforts to capitalize on this arena of new players and ideas are well underway. In a piece titled, “Unveiling vehicles and technologies for future space transportation,” the ESA (European Space Agency) touts the FLPP (Future Launchers Preparatory Programme) as an effort to enable studies and research to “foster new and disruptive technologies” that can reduce costs, improve performance and reliability, or further fulfill the needs of a space mission or system. One of these FLPP projects is Prometheus, Europe’s first ultra-low-cost reusable rocket engine demonstrator that is fuelled by liquid methane. This will look to aid European space launches over the next decade and beyond.

A general focus of the FLPP is to look further into alternative materials that can reduce the weight of new rockets. “New carbon composite materials are being used to replace aluminum for lighter upper stage structures and fuel tanks, as well as for rocket fairings that protect the payloads on their way to space,” according to the ESA. Other experimental materials include closed-cell polyurethane foam for external tank insulation, and the potential use of electro-mechanical actuators for smoother separation and jettison of payloads. The work of FLPP is also concerned with greater manufacturing efficiency and production methods that will cut down on time and even manpower, as solutions into AI and machine learning are being explored.

Like its European counterpart, NASA (National Aeronautics & Space Administration) has its own program for evaluating new technologies and research to support space endeavours, called NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts). NASA is constantly keeping its eyes on new ways to bring objects, and eventually people, into space. Currently ongoing is the Artemis program, which is looking to return humans to the moon as early as 2025, with the long-term goal of establishing a moon base to facilitate launching humans further into space toward Mars.

In a piece titled “Next generation of materials for space applications,” writers for Frontiers outline what the next generation of materials for space applications will need to look like. To start, such materials will need to be especially durable, resistant to radiation, lightweight, strong, and made of sustainable material. Composite materials will also be a must, along with nanotechnology-assisted materials (i.e. carbon nanotubes) and smart materials that can respond to changes in environment (i.e. shape memory alloys and piezoelectric materials). Carbon nanotubes are both lightweight and strong and can conduct electricity, making them ideal for use in solar panels or as radiation shielding, as well as for spacecraft, habitats, and more.

NASA itself has recently developed a new type of metal alloy through 3D printing called NASA Alloy GRX-810. It announced in a press release that the alloy can improve strength and durability of its components and parts used in aviation and space exploration, which can improve overall performance. It can also be used at high temperatures, is more malleable, and can survive 1000 times longer than current like alloys.

Signe and Dooley say in their article that advancements in materials science and 3D printing have decreased space launch costs, and the adoption of advanced materials like carbon fibre and advanced composites in the construction of rockets is leading to safer and more cost-efficient vehicles and vessels. Signe and Dooley say that oxygen and kerosene engines now take only 24 hours to produce through 3D printing as part of the manufacturing process, and this kind of development will continue to improve over the years.

FACC AG is a manufacturing company that has become an adopter of composite materials in the manufacture of space-borne objects. In a blog post for its website titled, “Composites: The future lies in space,” the company says that the use of fibre-reinforced composites has increased over the past few decades “due to their unique combination of low density, high stiffness and strength, and toughness,” to the point that these composites are considered “the next generation of materials for space applications.” These composites are key in reducing the weight of structures and systems in space (an ongoing challenge) as they are more resistant and stiffer and are more amenable to the environmental uniqueness of space.

Material development goes together with the innovations currently being planned and executed in space vehicles. In a 2022 article titled, “California startup Astrolab unveils space rover, more than a mere ‘moon buggy,’” Reuters reported that Venturi Astrolab, a California-based manufacturer, has a new brand of explorer vehicle that it calls FLEX. This four-wheeled vehicle has been developed to transport both astronauts and cargo and may end up being the vehicle appointed to the Artemis program in a few years.

In a piece for Tech Briefs titled, “10 Surging Space Startups,” Chitra Sethi deems that this new environment is a promising one for startup companies looking to make an impact in the space field. These newer companies, according to Sethi, can make their mark in areas like exploration, launch vehicles, satellites, and even assembly / manufacturing. For example, Firefly Aerospace is a space transportation company that is looking to develop a family of vehicles and services for spacefaring, including its signatures Space Utility Vehicle and Blue Ghost Lunar Lander, and has already been awarded a $112 million NASA contract to deliver multiple lunar payloads in 2026.

In a piece for Cosmos Magazine titled, “Heading for Mars? Not until a lot of work on novel space materials is completed,” Dr. Nisa Salim says that previous space missions used heat shields made of fibreglass honeycomb-filled polymer resin, compared to more recent missions that employ resin-impregnated carbon fibre. To further protect space vehicles, multicomponent impact-resistant materials have been developed using mounted aluminum and layers of Kevlar bonded with resin. These systems are not yet perfect, though, as once composites and coatings are bonded with resin or polymer, it is permanent, meaning that any damage to the surface means that it must be completely replaced instead of incrementally repaired.

Newer hybrid material composites like carbon fibre or CRFP (carbon nanotube reinforced polymer composites) look to improve on current metal alloys by lowering weight without giving up protective strength. Newer materials will likely implement self-healing agents in parts like microcapsules and hollow microfibers to respond to damage autonomously.

There is no end to the level of innovation and discovery occurring in the space sector, but time will tell how it will not only continue to evolve, but how these new approaches of manufacturing, research, and development will pan out into space exploration and even colonization.

The post The Final Frontier<p class="company">Spacecraft Manufacturing</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Now, pretty much everything we need is a click away and shows up in neat little packages at the front door.

While most of us continue to shop at stores, the number of shoppers doing the bulk of their purchasing online is growing at a fast clip. PricewaterhouseCoopers conducts an annual survey of 8,975 people about their consumer activities. This year, the survey revealed that nearly half of those polled intend to increase their online spending over the next six months.

The reason online shopping is increasing can be summed up in one name—COVID. When a vast swath of the population was spending all its time at home, many people found out how much they liked shopping online and kept on doing it even as restrictions were lifted. And as more and more consumers continue to change how they shop and go digital, there’s a big impact on the entire supply chain, from manufacturing to logistics. Like all of these seismic trends, it means companies need to adapt or be left behind.

Few companies do online fulfillment better than Amazon. The company made $12.7 billion this year during the Prime Day shopping event alone. Amazon itself is so big that its name has been used to describe the impact that heightened consumer demand has had on supply chains and manufacturers—the Amazon effect. The company has drawn hordes of people to its website since its inception in the early 1990s.

Remember when it was just a bookseller? Now the company hawks just about everything you can think of and consumer demand behind this retail juggernaut has led to solutions that focus on end-to-end traceability and the use of third- and fourth-party logistics by many companies just to keep up with the surging demand through the supply chain.

It’s the manufacturers who are the first step in the chain that starts when someone clicks on a site. The product they want has to come from somewhere. Traditionally, a big part of the manufacturing process is having enough but not too much of the raw materials needed, just in time to meet demand.

Let’s say somebody finds something they like and orders it from a retail site. The manufacturing company has been making goods based on orders from retailers, who in turn sell them to customers through the website. For manufacturing companies, the challenge is finding the sweet spot of having just enough of the raw materials for their products so that they can produce and get them out to clients while not having to sit on a cash-absorbing surplus of those materials stockpiled to fulfill future orders.

At the same time, manufacturers really can’t afford to be caught waiting for delivery of those raw materials while clutching a handful of urgent orders.

While the ‘just-in-time’ approach has served manufacturers very well, the process led to problems during the pandemic when manufacturers and suppliers had difficulty in both moving the finished products out and acquiring the raw materials needed to make them. To further complicate things, the whole situation was exacerbated by the significantly larger demand by consumers for products while they were stuck at home.

What manufacturers learned coming out of COVID was how to be more agile and flexible and thus better able to manage the manufacture of their products and adapt to changes in customer needs. That means that strict just-in-time manufacturing may not always be a viable option.

PNC Bank has noted several changes that manufacturers have made coming out of the pandemic. “It turned out that companies that had already undergone innovation shifts within the organization performed the best during the pandemic. Those that hadn’t begun building innovation into their plants performed the worst. And one of the most important ways to reshape the plant into an innovative design? Automate and build in robotics, where possible,” reads PNC’s The Future of Manufacturing in a Post-COVID World.

Once the products are made, they need to get to the consumers who want them. This means wholesalers, distributors, or retailers submit orders to manufacturers and then get the products shipped to them. And often, at this stage, it means storing them in a warehouse for a time before sending them out to consumers. This is no small step in the chain; warehousing on its own is a big business and is expected to grow by more than $72 billion by 2027, market researchers forecast.

The movement of products from manufacturers to retailers to consumers is a significant part of the supply chain and right now the cost to achieve it is skyrocketing.

Bloomberg reports that according to Drewry Shipping, moving a 40-foot cargo container from Shanghai to Rotterdam cost $10,522, which is a mind-blowing 5547 percent increase over the cost five years ago.

This is even more significant when you consider that 80 percent of all products end up being shipped by sea. In the Bloomberg article, Out-of-Control Shipping Costs Fire Up Prices From Coffee to Toys, retailers talk about the impact that this will have on everyone. “In 40 years of toy retailing, I have never known such challenging conditions from the point of pricing,” says Gary Grant, founder and CEO of British toy shop The Entertainer. “Will this have an impact on retail prices? My answer is yes.”

The last step of the supply chain is getting that product from the retailer to the person who made the purchase in the first place. At this point, things can get really interesting depending on what the retailer does.

Let’s take Amazon for example. More and more people are lured by convenience into shopping on websites like Amazon instead of going into a store. And for Amazon in particular, the scale of how those products are moved to the end consumer is quite impressive.

When an item is clicked on the website, the system signals a robot that takes it from the inventory shelves to employees, and from there, it’s moved on to a distribution centre near you. Then all those Amazon trucks on the road carry the boxes to the people who ordered them. It’s a huge fleet of about 40,000 trucks and 30,000 vans. Packages that have further to go are routed to an airport, as Amazon also has around 70 planes. Amazon’s shipping fleet is now so big the company is starting to move packages for other companies as well.

Most consumers expect to see their purchase within three days of the online transaction, if not that same day. The very last step of the process takes the product from the local distribution centre to someone’s front porch. Often it’s a local delivery company that takes the package across the finish line. This stage is particularly sensitive because it reflects the direct connection between the retailer and consumer, and even has its own name in the supply chain—the last mile.

Surprisingly, this is also one of the most expensive parts of the whole process, accounting for up to 53 percent of delivery costs, according to Forbes. Here’s where working with a reliable local delivery company that can provide that important seamless final delivery is critical. For some retailers, it will be the big players like UPS or FedEx, but many businesses will also partner with smaller companies.

Whichever partner is used, a company needs to consider how easily the delivery service can integrate with the retailer as well as handle returns. A McKinsey report notes that 33 percent of repeat consumers would abandon a retailer if they met problems with returning a product.

So, what’s next for the supply chain? It’s likely going to be a combination of robots and AI throughout the process. That includes how our products are made and automating steps throughout the chain to be even more efficient. There is still the concept out there of drones dropping off packages at a front door. Handy, right?

The post From Click to Doorstep<p class="company">Mapping the Supply Chain</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Modern mass transit vehicles are generally built in the same general process as the rest of the automotive industry: through factory processes creating the chassis and body and adding components to culminate in a final product. But there are some differences that come with scale.

Bus manufacturing companies differ in terms of how much of the bus itself is assembled onsite, whether a given company creates a bus chassis or underframe, the body or coachwork, or assembles all parts together in one. The splitting of the manufacturing process into separate segments allows for companies purchasing buses to make specified decisions on the construction of the vehicle, allowing for emphasis on certain augmentations around the chassis and/or coachwork. Further specialization exists with other types of transit buses, including overnight/sleeper models, school buses, and more.

Aircraft go through similar manufacturing steps as other transit vehicles, but the comparative sophistication of these vehicles requires an even greater degree of detail. Typically, aircraft begin with a design and planning process, using computers as well as drawings and equations to create an optimal plane. The craft is put through digital simulations and tests to ensure all its parts are up to standard. The design and planning stage for an aircraft can take up to four years to complete because of this rigorous testing process, after which it is assembled and put to market.

Rail cars for trains are assembled with attention paid to the design and specification process as well, with a WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) detailing how a rail car will go through each stage of manufacture and assembly. A car’s pieces are manufactured individually using subcontractors and these pieces are eventually assembled into its final shape.

These processes are accomplished at great scale on an annual basis. Buses are manufactured globally at a rate of over 300,000 units every year, while companies like Airbus and Boeing generally produce over 18,000 large jet aircraft annually. On top of this, the production of mass transit is a continually thriving and growing corner of the industry. According to market research published by IbisWorld, “The train, subway and transit car manufacturing industry in Canada has grown over the past five years,” with revenue increasing to $3 billion as of 2022.

Vehicles of all kinds, especially those involved in mass transit, are becoming subject to interesting and dramatic changes as customers and passengers demand different experiences for today’s roads, skies, and rails. Perhaps the biggest of these is the move toward the electrification of vehicles and transportation.

In a piece for Deloitte, various researchers see countries like the United States as “on the cusp of an EV [electric vehicle] expansion,” meaning that transportation leaders need to put focus onto this new trend sooner rather than later. This electrification extends to the manufacturing of these vehicles, as some manufacturers are looking to introduce EV models of vehicles to become carbon-neutral, with companies like General Motors committing to spending as much as $27 billion to reach this ideal. The piece continues in purporting that further changes to the transportation space will be felt at all crossroads: “New federal funding will provide further impetus to experiment with smart infrastructure, connected and autonomous vehicle technologies, and innovative mobility-on-demand solutions.”

Manufacturers and the workers they employ will need to become more familiar with the makeup and parts specific to electric vehicles as well. Deloitte reports that batteries make up nearly 30 percent of the total value of an EV, which requires the hiring and training of skilled battery technicians to create and repair these vehicles. U.S. federal programs like the Talent Pipeline Challenge seek to create workers who can work within this new sector on the horizon.

A report by MarketWatch says that the global bus manufacturing market will continue to grow between now and 2030, with North America serving as the largest market holder. Electrification, as well as the rise of alternative fuels in automotive spaces, will likely play a part in how the sector develops across this decade.

A piece for Bostik labels electric/hybrid buses as a “megatrend” in the industry, meaning that as the market continues to rise along with the call by customers for more fuel-efficient and sustainable travel solutions, electric vehicles will likely become a more attractive option to bus manufacturers (which will hopefully be enough of an offset to the upfront cost). The Bostik piece also notes that new smart technology will likely be on the radar for bus manufacturers, such as digital displays, electronic payment systems, Wi-Fi devices, and more.

In a blog post for VHR, Jonny Kramer notes a few trends that are on the rise in the aircraft manufacturing space and that mirror growth in mass transit overall. Besides a demand for more aircraft and an expected increase of product by about 40 percent—from “25,000 [aircraft] in 2017 to over 35,000 by 2027” for manufacturer Boeing, predicts Kramer—these vehicles will likely see innovation at the manufacturing level to address ongoing issues like capacity. “By seating more people per journey, aircraft manufacturers can design and build the planes that empower airlines to deliver high quality and consistent levels of service without facing extreme financial commitments,” Kramer says.

James Domone, in a piece for SNC Lavalin, references data from the IATA (International Air Transport Association) that aircraft passenger numbers will almost double their current number by 2036, with more than 7 billion people travelling by air yearly. This will lead to a doubling of output by the aircraft industry at large, including in manufacturing, as production of newer and more efficient types of craft will be boosted to new heights, albeit with potential bottlenecks in engine and interior manufacturing.

When it comes to avenues like train transportation, there continue to be movements within some countries like the U.S. and Canada to move toward more energy-efficient and greener rail systems, which are seen as potentially more environmentally sustainable than automobiles. However, the widespread adoption of rail transit (and in turn, the increase in rail manufacturing) won’t be possible until more countries take the plunge toward it, which is still a fraught path in the minds of many, requiring significant investments into creating a functional and attractive rail system in numerous cities, which some policy makers may not feel is worth the money.

Overall, there is a lot to be excited about, as the ways in which planes, trains, and automobiles in mass transit continue to evolve. Although it won’t be without growing pains and challenges, the prospect of greater electrification, capacity increase, and sustainable efforts is more attractive to a modern market than ever before and will likely be an important part of the manufacturing sector in the years to come.

The post Planes, Trains, and Automobiles<p class="company">The Making of Mass Transit</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

And so they should be. Launching the business on the sharp edge of COVID-19 in July 2019, they themselves, no matter how optimistic, could hardly have predicted the success they’d achieve in this short time. Today, a range of the company’s quality products are CSA-certified and contribute to the local economy.

Custom solutions
In the broadest sense, Black Controls automates industrial processes—everything from material handling conveyor systems to automotive assembly lines. Alongside its automation skills, the company provides its customers with custom design, manufacturing, and programming offerings.

“The services and processes that we implement are custom. What we do is very broad; we don’t typically have a standard offering. And that’s why our customers are seeking us out,” says Rick Black, founder and owner.

Based in a 13,000-square-foot facility in Barrie, Ontario, the company services clients’ facilities as far afield as Malaysia, Thailand, Germany, and the United Kingdom, as well as the whole of North America. Its skills have been well-honed in automation technologies like programmable logic controllers (PLCs), industrial robot systems, and advanced human-machine interface devices (HMIs), which form the backbone of communication and interaction of humans with machine controls and vice versa.

Black Controls also specializes in developing and implementing the latest autonomous mobile robot (AMR) technology, best known for material handling in large- to mega-facilities. These machines are popular as they are strong enough to lift factory skids and move bins around storage facilities for shipping, replacing the need for forklifts in warehouses.

Leading with quality
In this field, quality is imperative. To help drive consistent quality throughout its facility and product selection, Black Controls holds numerous industry certifications. These include its Electrical Safety Authority and a CSA and Special Industrial Control Panel (SICP) certification. The team is preparing for its ISO 9001:2015 certification audit governing quality management systems, and is also a member of the Canadian Tooling & Machining Association (CTMA).

“CTMA has been a good organization for us,” says Black. There’s different funding that they can connect us with for hiring our new graduates and then training them. So that’s helped us with some of those initial costs in getting people up to speed.” The company was also highly gratified when one of its team members received the 2022 CTMA Apprentice Award.

The company also participates in the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) Excellence Program and the A3 Association for Advancing Automation.

With demand rising, ensuring responsible resourcing is crucial. To this end, Black Controls strictly upholds the OECD’s Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas. The company goes to great lengths to deal only with reputable firms that uphold the same standards and values. Black Controls regularly collaborates with other firms referred to as integrators that serve the automotive industry with automation projects. Here, the team serves as an extension of the integrators’ businesses, offering support and overflow services such as design, programming, wiring, and the like.

A new need for automation
Beginning with a single partnership with a leader in medical and food sterilization enabled the company to grow and stabilize before it began expanding its reach. While hard evidence on reshoring manufacturing to North America remains hard to find, Black Controls reports that its growth has certainly been fanned in part by customers bringing their fabrication outfits back. Ongoing labour shortages are also driving the uptake of automation across the continent.

Black also notes the growing presence of novel technology such as that used in autonomous mobile robots. “We’re currently installing a project for a large automotive supplier in Ontario which is automating the movement of materials around their facility. Our customers are investing in AMR technology because it allows them to automate the movement of materials throughout their facilities. This helps them to combat the ongoing labour shortages, and also makes their facility safer by reducing forklift traffic,” he says.

In addition, the company serves a host of specialized fields in many other industries like construction and warehousing.

The core secret
Part of Black Controls’ superpower is the experience and commitment of its five-person leadership team.. “We have a really strong foundation, and we work well together,” Black says of the management team. “Our leadership team has done a fantastic job creating an environment where we can push and support each other to continually grow as individuals and as a team.”

Beginning life as a core group, expansion naturally followed as the demand for the company’s services grew. Building its team with a selection of graduates and co-op students from a nearby college, the company places significant importance on providing its staff and apprentices with continuous, quality training.

“If someone is coming out of school and is looking to join a company, I think there’s an extra appeal here because of our initial success as a young company,” Black says, referring to the company’s great record of signing on quality staff. Today, the company has electrical designers, licensed electricians, electrical apprentices, automation programmers, and an accounting and administration team.

To be sure, Black Controls’ approach to business is working. The company won the City of Barrie Mayor’s Innovation Award in the Pivot Point category for 2021 and in addition, Black was named in Manufacturing Automation’s Top 10 Under 40 for his achievement in building this flourishing company while still in his early thirties.

After completing his studies, Black began his professional life as an apprentice and eventually became a programming team manager at a large automated systems integrator. He worked as a professional integrator for over a decade, but his dream was always to establish his own firm. In 2019, he took the plunge. At first, the company operated from his home but very quickly outgrew that. Even its first 2,500-square-foot facility only sufficed for about 12 months.

Black and his team believe in sharing this good fortune with organizations and community projects that do good for local businesses and those in need. As such, the company is part of the Barrie Chamber of Commerce and The Sandbox, an innovation and entrepreneurship centre.

Black also serves on the Georgian College Electrical Technology Program committee. Every Year during the summer season, Black Controls makes it possible for a child to take part in a Barrie Baycats camp. The company also supports the Barrie Food Bank and a Hospital Activity Book for Children. Through Barrie & Area Christmas Cheer, the team sponsors a local family which benefits from its generosity during the festive season. Several other worthy causes benefit, too.

Optimism for the future
Contemplating the future, Black casts his glance back to 2008 as he recalls a lot of automation being outsourced to companies in Mexico at the expense of North American outfits in the industry.

“I think that after COVID, companies are realizing that labour is hard to keep. So companies are looking to any processes that can be automated,” he says. Black adds that the current mood around automating processes in manufacturing, from basic to complex, can only be called optimism.

Concerning a predicted recession, he notes that he hasn’t seen any changes in the company’s bottom line yet. Either way, the company continues to upgrade its internal processes to stay at the leading edge, with a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) software package that will improve efficiency and standardization. It looks very much like this automation leader will continue to expand and develop its capabilities and employee base with the speed and deftness it has shown so far.

Sidebar:

Key projects

AMR (Autonomous Mobile Robot) Integration, March – May 2023
Five AMRs were used in this project for an automotive manufacturing company in Southern Ontario. The AMRs are used to complete part handling between the factory warehouse and the production lines. The AMRs move both bins full of completed parts from production back to the warehouse for shipping as well as empty bins from the warehouse to the production line. Bins are loaded and unloaded from four staging locations in the warehouse, which has a TV display to direct the forklift operator as to which bins to load based on colour of bin (12 colours total) and which full bins are required to be unloaded. From the warehouse, robots will pick up the correct colour of bin and bring it to the desired location on the production floor. The robots move throughout the production floor traveling to 14 different lines and 34 total locations, running 24 hours a day completing the finished goods material handling for all 14 production lines. The robots used in this application can carry bins weighing up to 600 kg in a safe and controlled manner.

Clip Cell Vision Upgrade, Summer 2023
A reliable automatic method is required to inspect the automated clip installation at a Southern Ontario automotive plastic injection moulding supplier. Black Controls recommends integrating a camera into the existing cell above the automated clip installation escapement cylinder and having the robot present the part to the camera before releasing the part on unload conveyor. The camera will verify the presence of the two clips, as well as check that each clip has both tabs on the correct side of the part. If the camera inspection passes, the robot will place the part onto the unload conveyor. If the camera inspection fails, the robot will place the part into the existing reject chute / bin.

Conveyor Controls Systems for Sterilization
The customer for this project is a world leader in the sterilization industry. They are Black Controls’ first and continuous customers, an electron beam accelerator manufacturer with various systems throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. “We have designed, built control panels, wired and programmed over a dozen conveyor systems for them over the past four years. We have successfully implemented a number of improvements iteratively over each project to assist with troubleshooting, system cost, and shortened installation timeframes.”

Vision – Black Rail Vision Inspection, January 2022
For an automotive sunroof manufacturer in Southwestern Ontario, a new inspection system was needed to provide a reliable method to inspect black Velcro on black sunroof rail, as the existing inspection equipment could not detect the black Velcro pieces situated on the black rails due to the lack of contrast. Black Controls’ solution required minimal line changes and modification, with the result being a high-contrast image that produced a reliable inspection.

Vision – STN80 Inspection Booth Vision, February 2022
For this existing customer’s assembly line, a new inspection method was required to check if the clip feature was properly engaged in a larger frame assembly. The region of inspection was small, but the camera could not be mounted close to the part as it would obscure other inspections. With these parameters in mind, Black Controls installed a high-resolution camera to reliably check for clip install without impacting the existing inspections. Programming also had to incorporate existing inspection sequencing as flashes from each inspection would impact the results of the other cameras.

The post Much Ventured, Much More Gained<p class="company">Black Controls Company Inc.</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Supplying both the automotive and general industries with tooling, welding, and mechanical assemblies, this privately owned Canadian company continues to flourish, expanding the stamping operation in 1993, and continues to operate out of a new 175,000-square-foot facility.

“Tooling has been our focal point of strength for years and years, because we began as a tooling shop started by our father,” explains General Manager Robert Zeni. “We have the experience, the dedication, and the individuals who can take difficult concepts and make what our customers need in a way that’s cost-effective, efficient, and imaginative.”

Utilizing the newest 3D CAD/CAM technology in tool design also enables Clover Tool to share files with clients and accelerate product development with its complete prototype service.

A young core
Clover Tool has also always had a strong apprenticeship program, which means that in a field with a shortage of toolmakers, the company boasts a young core of toolmakers who have grown with the company’s standard and its way of doing things and are now in leadership positions, continuing to push forward in the field of automotive tooling. While the tooling area at large has a deficit of skilled workers, Clover Tool was wide awake and saw the writing on the wall in time, managing to keep ahead.

“In the last five to six years, we’ve excelled,” Robert says. “We’ve always done stamping, but now we’re really making it cost-effective and leveraging our efficiencies, quality, and safety. We’re looking at some above-average numbers, and we’re pushing to get to world-class OEE.”

Clover Tool has also excelled in the assembly department in the last several years, developing strong systems and pushing the outer limits in quality and product realization to customers.

Millwrights wanted
“The maintenance areas are where we’re facing challenges, specifically with millwrights,” Robert says. “We have young electricians that we’ve grown, but with our millwrights, there’ve been few apprentices that we could develop.”

The advent of COVID also created some losses by way of retirement, he adds. “Otherwise, internally, we’ve always been able to train people, even coming off the street, and been able to develop and train individuals into different skill positions in the organization.”

In finding those individuals, Clover Tool has spread its net pretty wide, working with high schools, colleges, social media, and the penal system to locate and train workers, along with the immigration population.

“We’ve done a number of things to try and get people in because we understand that, first of all, our industry isn’t well-known,” says Robert, adding that the government’s putting an end to the funding of skilled trades in 2008 hasn’t helped either. To combat this, the company has worked with several local organizations in Vaughan, such as area businesses and the Chamber of Commerce, to lobby for students.

“It’s not [seen as] a glamorous industry that people want to go into,” says Vice President George Zeni. “It starts right from elementary school; as parents, we all want our kids to do better than we have, and they all want to become doctors, lawyers, and accountants, but not go into the skilled trades.”

Clover Tool is striving to make a difference, however, leveraging its impressive decades of experience, knowledge, and growth within a company performing quality work in a facility where it can build and maintain tools and continuously evolve and adapt.

“We’ve also expanded over the years into the production side of things, which is metal stamping, growing that to 20-plus presses under one roof,” says Robert. “And inevitably we went into the value-add—the robotics and robotic welding, robotic assembly, and spot welding—where we really focused on the automation side of things.”

Understanding that there always challenges that come with labour, Clover Tool has automated more and more, creating a new set of employment opportunities for programming and for maintaining these robots. The company also established a second location in Breslau, Ontario, adding a business called Ultramet industries Inc. to its family of companies.

The big one
In terms of upcoming projects, Clover Tool has been awarded a “big” contract with several customers, involving the largest investment the company has ever made in new stamping equipment: a 1,650-ton press which is double the size of the previous largest.

“We’re hoping to have that all operational by the end of the year, which will increase employment, increase sales, and hopefully attract a diversified new group of customers,” says Robert. “It puts us on a new level of stamping that not too many players are on at this moment.” He adds that in this industry, especially in Ontario, there are only a handful of companies that have this type of equipment.

“It’s challenging because it’s a lot of money and a lot of moving parts. There’s not only the equipment, but there are also the facilities that have to be modified so they can accept this piece of equipment—or pieces, actually. It’s a combination of equipment from different companies that you put together along with the auxiliary equipment to support the expansion.”

While Clover Tool could have purchased the equipment overseas to save money, the company stayed local, buying from Ontario-based companies, a point of pride.

The company also prides itself on making its working environment and culture a top priority, with 80 percent of its staff having been employed there for three to four years minimum.

“We also have staff who have been with us for 30-plus years,” says George. “Employee engagement has always been something big. We’ve started to emphasize that in terms of policies and procedures and always being an employee-first organization, because we couldn’t do any of the things we’ve been doing without our great employees.”

This has translated into loyalty “through thick and thin,” with employees always on board.

“Part of that is we have very welcoming accommodation policies,” says George. “We work with everybody. If anybody talks to us about changing a shift or working hybrid hours or working from home, well, we’ve been doing that since well before 2019.” Clover Tool has always accommodated its employees as much as possible, he adds, even in a manufacturing industry where workers are required to be on site to run machines.

A family approach
“We’ve always brought our people together to work together, and to make sure that people’s families are taken care of first,” George says. “That’s very important too, especially coming from a family organization. We know the importance of trying to keep everything going well.”

This includes limiting overtime, not only because it saves costs but to ensure people are well-rested and not burning out.

“We work five days a week and we don’t put in massive amounts of overtime as a lot of people do in manufacturing,” he adds. “We always try to balance our staff and ensure we don’t rely on temps. We have maybe a maximum five to six temps at a time and typically, when we bring in temps, we’re doing temp to permanent.”

While in some manufacturing organizations 40 percent of the staff is temporary labour, Clover Tool always avoided this practice. And when COVID hit, the company once again rose to a very challenging occasion.

“There has never been a shutdown of that magnitude in automotive,” says Robert. “It was surreal. In the beginning, we were able to keep as many people as we could pay to try to keep people with food on the table.”

The company also strove to keep its employees as safe as possible. “We never had a work spread, or work case of COVID, where it spread internally, which we’re proud of,” says Robert. “From the beginning, we had all the countermeasures in place, from electronic screening to temperature checks, and everybody came on board. I’m so proud of everybody. They really tried their hardest to keep everybody else safe.”

That sense of camaraderie has extended to other areas as well. “That engagement and fulfillment has helped bring those results to our customers, and we also enjoy a lot of social events,” George says. This includes a recent outreach program with Toronto Conservation, cleaning up a park; potlucks, barbecues, and picnics; and charitable work for Sick Kids Hospital and Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital.

Staying safe, staying desirable
In terms of wages, while Clover Tool can’t necessarily out-compete everyone else with dollars and cents, it can compete very well with its company culture as well as its “next level” quality standard, especially in a stamping environment, says Robert. The company’s customer rejections have been well below industry levels—“pretty much near perfect” for a stamping environment.

“In terms of safety we’ve also definitely been well above the standard,” says George. “Our WSIB rates are lower than the industry standard; currently we are 1400 days without a lost time accident.”

He adds that in the past 15-plus years, with regard to safety, Clover Tool has enjoyed very good standing in terms of few or no incidents at work, creating a work environment that both attracts workers and keeps them safe.

“We go above and beyond with our employees, so much so that we’ve had employees leave and within two weeks call and ask to come back,” says George. “We’ve succeeded in creating an environment where people want to stay.”

The post The Tools of Success – Superior Products and a Stellar Work Environment<p class="company">Clover Tool Manufacturing Limited </p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

In the seventeen goals listed on the United Nations’ sustainability agenda set to be achieved over a fifteen-year timeline, the organization forecasts 9.6 billion humans will inhabit the earth by 2050. Since we already find ourselves in an environmental quandary, becoming a planetary asset as a species, rather than a liability is urgent.

The good news is that North Americans are starting to take the matter of single-use materials seriously, with a March 2020 study by Two Sides North America, a non-profit organization representing the paper-based packaging industry, showing strides in consumer awareness and preferences toward earth-friendly packaging. The study found that nearly two-thirds of American consumers are deliberately reducing their plastic packaging consumption.

Now the goal is to convert the as-yet-unconverted, and, thanks to modern technology, the packaging industry has the opportunity to become more innovative than ever before. Lightening our impact on the earth relies on curbing our consumption of goods and natural resources while producing goods that are not harmful to the environment at the end of their original purpose and can also be transformed into nothing by earth-friendly means.

And, while many people have been working on ways to achieve this, not all packaging that claims to be eco-friendly is equal.

Package fabrication can use sustainable energy derived from alternative resources such as solar, wind, and other types of power to avoid using electricity drawn from the main power grid throughout its entire process. Preferably, materials should be recycled and biodegradable and non-toxic, including the inks used to decorate them. The manufacturing process should also be as lean and as environmentally clean as possible.

Finally, the packaging volume should closely match the size of its content, eliminating or at least minimizing the need for extra layers of wrapping, both of the contents and the final, packaged unit. When this is not possible, additional layers should adhere to the same sustainability standards.

Finally, the goal is to avoid unnecessary transport. The shorter the distance between the client, the packaging manufacturers, and the materials suppliers, the less greenhouse gas is emitted, and fewer natural resources are under pressure during the manufacturing process. And by reducing the weight of the packaging materials, more products can be transported at one time, minimizing emissions even further.

While this does sound like a tall order for smaller brands, one way to ensure that packaging meets all these requirements is by consulting the guidelines set by the Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s membership rules. The coalition was founded at the 1992 Earth Summit by architect William McDonough, who was called “the mastermind of sustainable design.”

The Sustainable Packaging Coalition even has three cities’ recycling departments as members and its website lists an impressive list of sustainable packaging manufacturers, making it easy to find a trustworthy supplier. Bioplastics.com also provides a weighty list of bioplastics companies from raw materials suppliers and traders to service providers and manufacturers to further assist in finding contacts in this field.

Some of the more advanced materials applied to sustainable packaging and the disposable bioplastics field include crystallized polylactic acid (CPLA), a thermoplastic aliphatic polyester derived from cornstarch or sugarcane and, in Asia, parts of the tapioca plant. This is reportedly one of the more cost-effective bioplastics to fabricate as traditional manufacturing equipment for petrochemical plastics can process this material just as successfully as it does old-fashioned plastics.

One of the world’s current plastics game changers is Radical Plastics, based in Beverly, Massachusetts. This next-generation innovator recently came up with a patent that adds a natural waste product to traditional polymers, allowing the material to self-destruct at the end of its purpose span. Since last year, this company has been producing a brand new plastic that can easily be recycled alongside non-biodegradable plastics and still break down in nature at the end of its life. The company received a $500,000, 76West Award in 2019 for its invention. Co-founder Kristin Taylor estimates that, at current rates, the planet will have to handle around six million tons of discarded plastic by 2050, a dire picture that her company wants to help prevent.

As with the packaging itself, eco-friendly printing materials rely on the same picture of overall sustainable printing protocols. One contributor which has reached a high level of organic ingredients in its inks is Sun Chemical, an international pigments and ink giant whose website hints at an annual turnover of close to $9 billion. With its headquarters in Parsippany, New Jersey, this American branch of its Dutch-based parent company, DIC Corporation, has aligned its sustainability goals with those of the U.N.’s 2050 global sustainability action plan.

To this end, the company prides itself on fabricating sheet-fed offset inks formulated from generous levels of sustainable plant oils of varying sources. Its SunLit® and SunPak® ranges reportedly shine in C14 tests revealing they contain seventy percent organic content. The C14 test is the same carbon determination method commonly applied to date archaeological artefacts.

To support innovation in this field, several incentive programs exist, amongst which the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s BioPreferred® Program focuses on supporting the inclusion of renewable agricultural materials in such applications. Such products must contain little to no heavy metals and release zero to a minimal percentage of volatile organic compounds into the atmosphere.

Sun Chemical also developed a specialized glue that received the Association of Plastic Recyclers’ (APR) nod for Responsible Innovation. The product makes it much easier to remove shrink sleeve labels from polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) bottles during the wet cycle – bottles that would otherwise end up in landfills because the label could not be removed. The best part is that the product can be used with existing equipment without the need for upgrades.

While a one-size-fits-all, sustainable packaging solution does not yet exist, it is exciting to discover the incredible number of manufacturers around the world which are applying tremendous resources to solve the issue of sustainable packaging in wholly unexpected and refreshingly creative ways.

The post The Business of Branding<p class="company">Packaging & Labeling</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Industry 4.0 stands for “the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” explains an April 5, 2016 Forbes magazine article.

The first Industrial Revolution (IR) was all about mechanization (think: water and steam power). The second IR centred on mass production (thanks to the advent of electricity and the assembly line) while the third Industrial Revolution was based around computers and automation. The fourth Industrial Revolution is all about “cyber physical systems,” says Forbes.

Professional services firm Deloitte offers a more detailed explanation: “The term Industry 4.0 encompasses a promise of a new industrial revolution—one that marries advanced manufacturing techniques with the Internet of Things (IoT) to create manufacturing systems that are not only interconnected but communicate, analyze, and use information to drive further intelligent action back in the physical world.”

The IoT refers to online networks in which sensor-equipped smart devices including phones, televisions, HVAC systems, lights, car systems, etc. gather and share data, respond to digital commands, and perform automated functions, if so programmed.

A subset of the IoT, often referred to as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), describes similar networks in manufacturing settings. Sensors, cameras, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags, and other electronics are linked to machines to gather data. Other technologies that play an important role in Industry 4.0 include Big Data, Cloud Computing, Additive Manufacturing (AM), Advanced Robotics and Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) says London, UK-based software firm, AFMG.

Smart factories step up

Manufacturing facilities that incorporate such technologies are sometimes called smart factories. Using such high-tech tools and methods, manufacturers can dramatically boost efficiency, safety, productivity, and traceability.

“Smart factory initiatives typically accelerate business value creation. Companies report on average 10 to 12 percent gains in areas such as manufacturing output, factory utilization, and labour productivity after they invest in smart factory initiatives,” says a 2019 survey report from Deloitte and the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation (MAPI).

Machine monitoring is one of the most obvious benefits of a plant-based IIoT network. Sensors and cameras fitted to machinery provide production data which can be viewed on a laptop, computer, or smartphone. Constant monitoring gives manufacturers real or close to real-time data regarding the performance and condition of their machinery as well as output.

Predictive maintenance can be scheduled if a machine appears to be faltering, and factory staff get a much better sense of when a machine needs to be replaced or a manufacturing set-up needs to be changed.

A sensor-based network inside a warehouse or stockroom can precisely track inventory. If stock is running low, computers can be programmed to automatically place orders for replacement parts, materials, or consumables. In similar fashion, the system can send out an alert if there’s an overflow of stock.

An online IIoT network can also be fashioned for finished products. Sensors and RFID tags can keep tabs on the number of finished products inside a plant, when they are shipped, and the delivery process.

Improved quality assurance is another key benefit of Industry 4.0. Inspection equipment fitted with sensors and machine vision software can be used to spot defective parts and tally output totals on production lines. Sensors can also provide data about material usage, scrap consumption and waste management in manufacturing facilities.

Going big on data

Having massive amounts of information is obviously handy but can be overwhelming. This is where two other components of Industry 4.0, namely Big Data and Cloud Computing come into play.

“Big Data is a term that describes the large volume of data—both structured and unstructured—that inundates a business on a day-to-day basis. But it’s not the amount of data that’s important, it’s what organizations do with the data that matters. Big Data can be analyzed for insights that lead to better decisions and strategic business moves,” explains U.S. analytics solutions company SAS.

“In the manufacturing industry, there are many different types of data to take into consideration, including the data coming from production equipment fitted with sensors and databases from ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning] CRM [Customer Relationship Manager] and MES [Manufacturing Execution Systems],” adds AFMG.

This flood of data can be interpreted and broken down using various digital tools, allowing manufacturers to make better business decisions.

“Machine learning models and data visualization can aid data analytics processes. Broadly speaking, machine learning techniques apply powerful computational algorithms to process massive data sets, while data visualization tools enable manufacturers to more easily comprehend the story the data tells,” explains AFMG.

Cloud Computing offers a safe and convenient way to store all this information. In Cloud Computing, information is saved on a remote server and is accessed through the Internet. Even if all the computers in a manufacturing plant were to crash or be corrupted by a virus, information in the cloud will be preserved.

Digital twins and cobots

The use of Digital Twins is another cutting-edge Industry 4.0 innovation.

“A Digital Twin is a digital representation of a real-world product, machine, process, or system that allows companies to better understand, analyze and optimize their processes through real-time simulation,” explains AFMG.

A Digital Twin stores data sent by IIoT devices then uses this information “to predict potential issues so that pre-emptive measures can be taken. For example, an operator can use a Digital Twin to identify why a part is malfunctioning or to predict the lifetime of a product. This continuous simulation helps to improve designs of products as well as to ensure equipment uptime,” says AFMG.

Industry 4.0 also covers the robotic field. While robotic systems have been used in manufacturing circles for decades, the new buzz word is “cobot”—short for collaborative robot. AMFG says that a cobot is a robot that is “designed to work safely around people, freeing workers from repetitive and dangerous tasks.”

In the same vein, additive manufacturing, also called 3D printing, is a new spin on traditional machining methods. For most of history, industrial parts or components were cut or carved from solid blocks of material (a process called subtractive manufacturing). In additive manufacturing, parts are literally printed in plastic or metal, using a special 3D printer. The part is shaped according to a 3D digital design and customization options are huge.

Augmented reality, for its part, “superimposes virtual images or data onto a physical object” such as a smart phone, smart glasses or tablet computer, says AFMG.

“In the context of manufacturing, AR could enable workers to speed up the assembly process and improve decision-making. For example, AR glasses could be used to project data, such as layouts, assembly guidelines, sites of possible malfunction, or a serial number of components, on the real part, facilitating faster and easier work procedures.”

Slow to go smart?

While all these technologies are breathtaking, it’s worth remembering there are few fully functioning smart factories anywhere in North America.

“Only five percent of U.S. manufacturers surveyed in a recent study reported full conversion of at least one factory to ‘smart’ status with another 30 percent reporting they are currently implementing initiatives related to smart factories,” reported Deloitte, in a 2020 paper entitled, Smart Factories Have Arrived.

Most recently, COVID seems to have spurred interest in Industry 4.0 solutions.

“Many of the companies we spoke with have quickly pivoted to expanding the use of Industry 4.0 technologies in their plants in response to the disruptions caused by COVID-19,” notes a recent Deloitte article.

To prevent infection, officials at manufacturing plants installed computer vision systems for virtual tours, gave workers wearable devices that sounded alarms when someone got too close and increased the number of cobots on duty, reports Deloitte.

It needs to be mentioned there are risks involved in connecting all machines and computers in an online network. Manufacturing networks are obviously attractive to computer hackers intent on mayhem or spies engaging in corporate espionage.

“With much of industry using IoT and related industrial control devices, there is a significant potential for such devices to be compromised and in turn compromise critical manufacturing capability . . . This also provides another vector for loss of intellectual property as compromised devices forward collected information or highjacked cameras transmit images of unknowing owners and the like,” reads a December 2016 paper from the U.S. Department of Defence.
Good cyber defences, however, can go a long way in warding off hackers and spies. And clearly, the benefits of Industry 4.0 are enormous.

Better and faster future

As for the future, expect manufacturers to start incorporating more artificial intelligence into their operations.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning “help companies improve the efficiency of their value chains and make better and faster decisions by having a deeper understanding of their customers. AI-empowered analytics tools are making it easier for manufacturers to identify shifts in customer demand in order to adjust production lines while machine learning is helping companies enhance product quality, optimize inventory-management processes and track products across a supply chain,” notes a paper from professional services firm PwC Canada.

The post How Technology is Transforming Traditional Manufacturing<p class="company">Industry 4.0</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

The strategy has allowed SPS to develop solutions for even the most difficult problems. For example, the Canadian pharmaceutical industry has strict regulatory compliance requirements for high-purity piping systems, and SPS has been completely unrivalled in its service to that market. Being able to develop systems that meet these strict specifications is a key component of the company’s success and a direct result of its approach.

In the late eighties, a Canadian pipe fabrication outfit was acquired by an American company. The Canadian facility was quickly closed and all operations were moved to a new factory in Wisconsin. This left a talented group of engineers, welders, fabricators, and construction workers in a bind. They were offered positions at the new facility, but the prospect of relocating to an entirely different country made that option a tough one to choose. Eventually, those workers decided to bet on themselves, by pooling their skills together and forming a new company in the wake of that takeover.

Today, after more than thirty years in business, Stainless Piping Systems has a dedicated team of professional engineers, technical designers, specialized steamfitters, welders, and installation experts. This level of experience and proficiency has resulted in a well-deserved reputation for quality and a stunning portfolio of landmark projects.

The company more than doubled in size in 2018 to work on several large projects taken on that year and then doubled again in 2019. Despite issues affecting the entire industry throughout 2020, SPS has been pushing forward and has maintained its size.

Stainless Piping Systems leverages the latest technology to ensure that its designs are perfectly suited to the project at hand, and to make certain that the installations are completely accurate in following those designs. The company’s design team harnesses the power of building information modelling, or BIM, to model not only the equipment but the entire building and all the piping within it to within one-sixteenth of an inch.

The design team will model the building and piping systems in a virtual, three-dimensional drawing, and then design the new system within that virtual environment before installing a single pipe. This permits the team to engineer the best possible solution, while significantly reducing oversights and errors.

Once the design team has finished engineering a solution for the project at hand, the BIM outcome is sent to the fabrication team which will use them to prefabricate sections of the system to those specifications. The prefabricated piping components are then shipped to the on-site installation team which can use GPS positioning technology to install the components precisely where they are meant to go according to the model.

“We use BIM to essentially turn the virtual world into reality. We have used this method for very small to extremely large construction projects and all with great success,” says President and Senior Project Manager Dave Damen.

As the technology advances, Stainless Piping Systems is prepared to adapt. The next phase in modelling technology is the PointCloud system. Where BIM helps the company turn virtual models into reality, PointCloud helps it turn reality into an accurate virtual model. Traditionally, BIM models have been generated using measurement data from the original architectural drawings of a building. Unfortunately, these drawings are not always a flawless reflection of the space. For some older buildings, they might not even exist.

With PointCloud technology, SPS can take pictures of the space from various angles, and the software can calculate the exact measurements on its own, rather than depending on old measurements that may or may not be accurate. This method returns precise data from just a simple series of photographs leading to huge cost and time savings for installations in existing facilities.

“So there’s no more confusion of going by old drawings of what the building was intended to be, but it’s what the building actually is. All of this put together means that we’re able to install with the same efficiency in existing buildings that we are currently able to do in new buildings,” says Damen.

Although site offices are located all across Canada, the operational base of SPS can be found in Toronto, where it has 25,000 square feet of fabrication and testing space in its state-of-the-art facility and an additional 25,000 square feet of warehousing availability for project-specific requirements.

The company has completed exciting projects straight across the nation from British Columbia to Prince Edward Island, and it plans to have a more active role south of the nation’s border in the coming years. This plan has unfortunately been stalled due to the complications of COVID-19, but SPS has stayed in touch with its American partners and looks forward to a time when it will be possible to establish a larger presence in the American market.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, SPS has continued to provide steadfast support to its partners in the five essential industries it serves. The company’s main presence is within the pharmaceutical industry, but it also operates in the medical, food and beverage, manufacturing, and construction markets. Serving such a breadth of marketplaces is a challenge in that each has a specific set of requirements, but by diversifying its customer base, SPS has remained strong and prepared for any unpredictable obstacles in the road ahead.

SPS has worked on several notable and memorable projects over the course of its history. One of many examples was eight years ago when it installed high-purity piping on every floor of a twenty-one-storey building for the research tower at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, also known as SickKids.

“We have a proven track record in the industry. In fact, recently the company was nominated for a CanBIM Spotlight award for the design, fabrication, and installation of twenty-seven kilometres of high-purity piping and twelve process skids at a 500-million-dollar Canadian vaccine facility built in Toronto,” says Damen. The piping was packed into the massive building so tightly that it would not have been possible to coordinate without the use of BIM. This nomination demonstrates that the company has become known throughout the industry for quality service and skill across every facet of its operation.

“We’re trying to harness the power of technology to work on these projects, and that was a great project to work on that really showcased the use of technology and the resources we have available,” says Damen. As a strong, unionized company that works well collaboratively, SPS was able to pull together a team of one hundred employees to support this construction project over a two-year span.

The company’s ability to successfully merge the three core disciplines of engineering, manufacturing, and construction into one efficient operation is a major differentiator. Typically, separate organizations will be brought in for each of these tasks, and this can create communication issues. Having everything under one roof enables close alliances between teams, resulting in less risk, more precision, and faster delivery.

Stainless Piping Systems will continue to embrace the industry’s shift toward a digital reality. Having been at the forefront of technology from its beginning, the company is prepared to adopt any technology that can improve its ability to serve its customers.

“We are a driven company comprised of forward-thinking team players, ready to change the industry and have fun while doing it. We strive to always learn, connect, and deliver excellence,” says Damen.

The post Serving Essential Industries with High-Purity Piping<p class="company">Stainless Piping Systems</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

In the late 1960s, the famous anti-war advocacy group Another Mother for Peace (AMP) had a memorable slogan displayed on placards and clothing at nearly every opposition rally. It said ‘War is not healthy for children and other living things.’ Ironically, it took the war on COVID-19 to make us realize at many of our public spaces are also not healthy for living things. Today, the North American manufacturing industry is stepping up to help create healthier spaces for people to work and gather.

Underscoring the human ability to transcend challenges through creativity, fabricators specializing in furniture, technology, and everything else it takes to make public spaces function more safely during the pandemic are currently looking at ways to adapt and improve their products to answer the demand for social distancing and personal protection in public. As always, early adopters in the field are in the midst of an unprecedented boom.

There are several universal points that solution providers must consider when rethinking the safety of people in high-density indoor and outdoor spaces. These mainly include the number of people who can be safely allowed into a public space at any one time, the physical distance between those people, the air and light quality of indoor spaces, cleanliness, and the number of touch or contact points that exist for the building or outdoor space to function properly.

Technology manufacturer XOVIS points out that controlling the flow of people is the first step in managing social distancing in busy public spaces. To this end, it collaborated with Cologne-based software company dimedis, which recently launched ViCo, a digital visitor admission control product that runs on XOVIS software.

The easily programmed, automatic ‘people counter’ is used to control visitor access by counting and managing the number of people legally allowed within a space. Features include a traffic-light style stop-and-go system that can, with permission, collect and analyze data on the behaviour of occupants. The product received the business magazine WirtschaftsWoche and Deutsche Telekom’s Digital Champions Award in 2020.

XOVIS also introduced several hardware and software solutions to control general contact in retail spaces as well as in airports and other transportation hubs. Its Passenger Tracking System employs 3D sensors that unobtrusively track and count passengers. This information is then processed by its XOVIS Airport Software, identifying and alerting managers to any issues related to crowding, distancing, and occupancy within any of the designated public areas. The sensors also employ artificial intelligence (AI) to detect people who are not wearing face masks and can spot and remove employees from calculations when analyzing data.

Manufacturers’ research and development teams are not only transforming interiors with novel technology and furniture made to enforce two-meter distancing in all directions, but outside spaces are also being reimagined. The design team of Kosovo-based Architecture for Humans recently shared a seating plan that permits about forty-eight single stools to be slotted between heavy floor tiles at two-metre intervals. This gives each seat a generous radius of free space in which people can enjoy reading books, have a snack, listen to music, or just kill time while grabbing some fresh air, knowing that they are at a safe distance from their neighbours. The seats are easily installed, rather simple to manufacture, and an ideal feature for modern, open plazas with heavy tiling.

One of the world’s most memorable recent initiatives of social distancing was at The Flaming Lips’ rock concert’s ‘space bubble’ approach to COVID-19. After performing inside one of these zip-up plastic spheres last year, the band decided to provide everyone in their audience with a bubble at its 2021 performance for around three hundred fans at The Criterion theatre in Oklahoma City.

Each bubble was fitted with a speaker for clear sound, and water and towels were also provided. The disinfection process before and after use was stringent, and there were signs inside that fans could flash at assistants to request a break. The bubbles were said to be safely oxygenated for just over an hour with three occupants inside and could easily be resupplied using a leaf blower. Further ‘space bubble’ concerts are surely on the way.

Further afield, Wayne Head of British architecture firm Curl la Tourelle Head, provided a design for London, England’s first pop-up school, based on a sturdy tent layout. The classrooms are geared toward social distancing and ensuring that children have enough fresh air. The basic versions are great for use in summer, but the range also offers more sophisticated, insulated units that can function in all weather, year-round.

“We are confident that we have the solution to help schools increase their capacity and bring back more pupils while still following the social distancing rules and ensuring a safe environment for the children and staff,” Head stated on the Curl la Tourelle Head website in June last year.

Closer to home, CNBC has reported that the need to curb the spread of COVID-19 is fortifying the argument for employing more biophilic design in public spaces. Edward O. Wilson, who coined the term in his 1984 book ‘Biophilia,’ defined it as “the urge to affiliate with other forms of life.”

While current safety measures like dividing barriers may not remain compulsory forever, overall air and water standards are expected to rise permanently, as is the trend of enhancing interiors with the healthful perks provided by plants, fresh air, natural light, and other earthy elements.

One product set to transform traditional office lighting is low thermal emissivity glass (E-glass). It provides significantly improved insulation and, as a result, much better energy efficiency in buildings with large windows. Social distancing has also increased the need for optimizing the use of outdoor spaces. As a result, innovative office spaces and meeting areas are popping up in traditionally under-utilized spots like rooftops.

With overall wellness becoming increasingly imperative in the workplace, companies are beginning to offer staff custom-made, technology-free spaces and meditation rooms like those at Nelson Worldwide’s offices in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The global architecture leader and brand strategist also predicts more cafeterias and cafés setting up outdoors and an increase in virtual cafés and ghost restaurants or ‘cloud’ kitchens that deliver food via third-party contributors. Naturally, manufacturers are called upon to come up with materials and methods that will optimize personal protection, food safety through advanced packaging, and the safety of those using designated spaces.

A great example of the responsibility that now rests on the manufacturing industry to produce smart, touch-free, and social distancing design elements for public spaces is Chicago’s new Fulton East on 215 N. Peoria Street in the Fulton Market District. Driven by the outbreak of COVID-19, the design of this next-generation building gives us a hint at what more manufacturers could soon be offering. Arguably one of the world’s first new builds adapted to deal specifically with a health crisis such as COVID-19, Fulton East includes modern safety elements such as bathrooms painted in microbicidal paint claimed to wipe out around 99.9 percent of disease-causing bacteria within about two hours of it settling on painted areas.

Apart from adopting hands-free navigation for everything from faucets to access points and thermal scanning devices, the building also features the foot-activated elevator call button, Toe-To-Go (T2G), system by Canadian outfit, MAD Elevator Inc. According to Forbes, the Fulton East is making history as the first new building to house these elevators. There is also a marked move toward using specialized alloys on metal surfaces that are frequently touched. Copper is scientifically proven to be less hospitable to viruses than materials like stainless steel or plastic, making it the smarter choice.

Considering how COVID-19 and social distancing will affect where and how people choose to set up shop, establish offices, and gather in the future, things will change. Bob Wislow, chairman and chief executive officer of Fulton East’s development company, Parkside Realty, Inc., hinted in Forbes magazine at a marked move away from traditional high-rise buildings toward smaller ones. This trend could bring about increased demand for more health-conscious and specialized designs.

Scientists deem the movement toward biophilia in design to be a giant leap in the right direction, because the average urban American can rarely be found outdoors, and the statistics are troublesome. People are estimated to be indoors over eighty percent of the time, and health issues from being in contact with raised pollution levels inside highly-populated buildings. Such toxic indoor pollution can be caused by paint fumes, cleaning chemicals, smoke, dust, and more.

Manufacturing goods that embrace nature and biophilic design is increasing by the day. “COVID-19 has accelerated the healthy buildings movement,” Joseph Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health told CNBC. “Every sector is now talking about what they need to do for health in the building, for COVID-19, infectious disease transmission and beyond,” he added.

The post Minimizing Contact<p class="company">Manufactured Solutions to Promote Social Distance</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Keeping the workplace safe from all types of hazards should be considered top priority for all companies, and while injuries, accidents, illnesses and sicknesses account thousands of hours of missed time every year in various businesses, using proven technology to not only discover where accidents are most commonly happening but help prevent them in the first place, is an effective step to keeping workers safe.

Humans are fallible and apt to make emotional based decisions, and this explains why about 90 percent of industrial accident reports indicate a failure on the part of the injured person or co-worker. But while humans are going to continue to make errors, workplaces also have a long way to go in ensuring workers of all skill levels and educational abilities are kept as safe and harm-free as possible. Inadequate training, for instance, is hardly the fault of a worker who may not receive all the information required to keep them from being injured while doing their job.

But where can a given company improve, and what can be done? Adopting an analytical approach to combating illness and accidents is an effective method of tackling the problem. We humans also tend to attribute accidents to reasons that might not always line up with reality, so collecting and analyzing relevant data is essential to uncovering the true cause of an incident in order to improve.

Many different factors can contribute to workplace safety incidents, and it’s not always obvious what changes will have an impact on safety. Fortunately, data-driven analytics can help organizations not only understand where potential issues lie and why, but how to help prevent them happening in the future.

According to Visier, a leading analytics company, “while using data to find the root causes of safety issues can be very effective, companies who do provide safety reports are often unable to link that data to the workforce metrics and attributes that impact the frequency and likelihood of safety incidents.”

Knowing that incidents happen isn’t enough to prevent them for occurring down the road, especially when only relying on human understanding. Using an HR analytics team to gather and analyze a company’s data in order to create effective training programs, prevention plans, and better hiring practices of employees who meet company standards are also vital preventative measures.

In order to better understand how analytics can benefit your workplace safety, it’s important to also understand what safety issues your company faces, whether lost time is decreasing or increasing, the comparability of injuries over different sites, and which areas show the highest number of injuries. Knowing all of this will assist you in not only seeing trends but how they actually affect your company’s productivity.

It’s also vital to find possible causes of injury by examining data for top employee attributes linked with higher and lower frequency and severity of safety incidents, along with near misses and lost time. Looking at new employees and their possible lack of experience might mean the need for more safety training. If older employees are being injured, refresher courses might be required for the entire company.

Constant vigilance and overall education is important in any type of business. Presuming that employees — new or tenured — can always remember the safety protocols, or will always follow them — is not only naive, but potentially dangerous.

Those in charge of keeping workers safe also play a big role. Understanding employees’ jobs and what is needed to keep them safe is vital for day-to-day safety protocol and putting preventive measures in place to not only keep accidents from occurring, but helping employees know how to do their jobs more safely.

In the blog post Workforce Safety Panel: A Data-Driven Approach to Reducing Workforce Injuries from Press Ganey, panellists stated that “incorporating predictive analytics into any organization’s data strategy, in addition to lagging indicators, is an important first step on this transformational journey. Whereas the latter provides key insights into the frequency, severity, and financial impact of workplace injuries, predictive analytics are essential for identifying risk and intervention techniques.” By uncovering trends of these injuries, leaders in the company can learn to predict, prevent and strategize to avoid them.

Of course, even the best injury prevention programs will be ineffective if employees aren’t educated to work safely, and all of the data gathered won’t make any difference if a company itself isn’t willing to take the steps to implement the changes.

James, formerly employed at a large, worldwide, billion-dollar company in Kitchener, Ont., was frequently subjected to potentially harmful working environments stemming from inadequate training procedures. He was trained by a fellow untrained employee, was highly encouraged to do more work than his body could physically sustain at the encouragement of his floor supervisor, and when he ended up harming himself, the company did not only not listen to his concerns, but asked him repeatedly if he employed elsewhere outside of company time, or “working out” in a gym that might have given him the injuries. When James asked if he would be compensated for sustaining injuries on the job, company leadership told him he would be switched to “light duty” instead. In order to keep getting paid, James was asked to spend eight hours a day sweeping instead of stacking.

“There were safety measures put in place to help keep us safe, but everyone ignored them because they slowed us down and we couldn’t make the quota pushed on us by the company,” says James. “Supervisors knew we were doing this but didn’t care. We got yelled at if we had a ‘slow’ shift.”

If James went over quota the company made money, but not the workers, which he didn’t know at the time. “The quota was a safe guideline so workers wouldn’t get hurt, but if we passed that quota, it would be expected every time.”

If companies are unwilling to understand how employees can injure themselves, data won’t be valuable when it comes to prevention. If unsafe practices continue to go unchecked and workers’ issues are ignored or downplayed, more serious injuries are sure to follow. In James’ case, he managed to recover after he quit, but that’s not always the case. Protecting workers in any industry needs to remains a top priority. Collecting and analyzing data can definitely help, but only if those organizations are willing to make the necessary changes in practices and behaviours.

Emotional and psychological safety is also of utmost importance, and one that many companies tend to overlook in favour of physical safety only. Like most labour statistics, TCIR and DART measure events where physical harm occurred—and to such a severe degree that employees were unable to work. Wanting to impress bosses, dealing with abuse in the workplace, both verbal and physical, threats and intimidation and all forms of workplace stress also need to be measured, analyzed and dealt with in order to have healthier, happier and more productive employees.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has recently updated its Guidelines for Safety and Health Programs that was released 30 years ago in order to reflect changing workplaces, the economy and various safety and health issues. Its recommended practices feature core elements including the main goal of preventing workplace injuries, illnesses, and deaths, along with mental and financial hardships workers, their families, and employers. Some of these include: Prevent workplace injuries and illnesses; Improve compliance with laws and regulations; Reduce costs, including significant reductions in workers’ compensation premiums; Engage workers; Enhance their social responsibility goals; Increase productivity and enhance overall business operations.

Above all, being proactive in the workplace when it comes to employee safety is a top priority, as, traditionally, dealing with problems in the aftermath is how companies have dealt with injuries and accidents. By investigating, analyzing and meeting the potential issues head on and anticipating any problems before they happen, a company can essentially prevent serious injuries. Adopting simple programs and goals and following through with diligence and monitoring of behaviours and practices, a company can work to achieve better and more effective safety levels in all areas of their business.

James, who is no longer employed at his former company, is still suffering the lingering effects of neglectful training and overwork that has caused damage to his elbows, but he’s grateful it’s not a permanent injury.

“Companies need to listen to their workers and understand when they’re being worked too hard or when situations are dangerous. Bodies can only do so much and can only be pushed so hard,” he says. “I’m one of the lucky ones. I was able to quit and find something else, but not everyone can do that.”

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