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.
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.
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.
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.
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Schmalz
Good companies change; great companies evolve. And few have adapted over the years like Schmalz, starting in 1910 as a razor blade business in Germany. Founder Johannes Schmalz was an entrepreneur far ahead of his time—how many businesses establish their own hydroelectric plant on a river to power their machinery?
bioLytical Laboratories
Early illness detection is a precious tool for maintaining health and making rapid, well-informed health decisions. And it’s something bioLytical Laboratories Inc. has honed via its leading-edge solutions for infectious illness diagnosis, the first step in connecting patients with proper care and treatment and even saving their lives.
Photodigm
Back in March, Congressman Colin Allred toured Photodigm’s facilities in Richardson, Texas, and liked what he saw. A member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas’s 32nd district, Congressman Allred’s visit underscored the importance of America’s CHIPS and Science Act.
Torvan Medical
A leading company in the design and production of products for medical and scientific sectors, Torvan Medical employs exemplary craftsmanship with a focus on creating and marketing cutting-edge products for infection control and preventing cross-contamination. Whether it’s ergonomic decontamination devices such as sinks, height-adjustable workstations, or endoscopic cabinets, Torvan continually stays ahead of the curve.
PAMA Manufacturing and Sterilization
In little more than a decade, PAMA has grown into one of Canada’s top specialists in ethylene oxide (EtO) sterilization and the manufacture of medical devices. Focused on single-use custom medical kits and accessories for other businesses through its private label, PAMA (short for Production of Advanced Medical Accessories) also meets the needs of customers through its own brand.
SterileCare Inc.
Catheter lock solutions are medically tested and approved liquids used to promote the anti-coagulation of blood and to provide antimicrobial protection inside catheter tubing while it is not in use. But not all lock solutions are equal. Canadian SterileCare Inc.’s patented KiteLock 4%, a non-antibiotic antimicrobial catheter solution, is destroying superbugs on home soil and beyond.
