Statistics are the backbone of both industrial quality control and epidemiology. Engineering professionals use statistics to gain meaningful insight into how defects occur in production systems and where. There are similarities to the current Covid 19 pandemic and government response to it. Can government take a page from the manufacturing experience?

The air freight industry has been disrupted by COVID, but 2021 may give manufacturers a much needed break.

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The AMNESIA:33 attack is just the latest of a series of malware assaults on connected systems around the world. Control of industrial systems from anywhere is useful, but can it exist in the shadow of a determined and skilled hacker community? Jim Anderton comments.

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AC induction motors are the backbone of industrial production worldwide. MRO operations for large firms are data driven, but what about smaller companies? Jim Anderton talks about some simple things engineering SMEs can do to keep motors turning.

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Covid 19 is nominated in the media in 2020, but in American manufacturing there are seminal forces at work which now decide future of this critical sector in the 21st century. Jim Anderton comments on how vertical integration, finding and developing a skilled workforce, and the challenge of automation are issues that must be resolved to keep the US economy vibrant.

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Jigs and fixtures form a considerable part of the cost and time to production for many manufacturing processes. But what if advanced robotics could reduce or eliminate jigs and fixtures in production? For complex assemblies and large weldments, the technology already exists and promises to reduce unit costs in both high mix low volume, and mass production applications. Jim Anderton looks at how it works.

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Electric vehicles are everywhere in popular media today, led by the spectacular growth of Tesla. Many in the mass media and on Wall Street predict that the coming EV revolution will be the death knell for legacy automakers. Will the end of the internal combustion engine mean the end of Toyota, Volkswagen, GM and Ford? In this episode, Jim thinks that the story is a lot more complicated than the non-engineering community realizes, and that big players are well placed to do well in a fossil-fuel free automotive world.

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In this episode, Jim discusses that what makes robots different was that they were programmable and general purpose and could be adapted to multiple in plant uses. Overall, the idea was to let the machines to the complex tasks and simplify the manufacturing process overall. But has it?

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Bad as the Covid 19 pandemic is, it’s heartening to see that US and global manufacturing is starting to look at what the world will look like after it subsides. We're a consumption economy, and in mass-market of consumer goods; convincing people to open their wallets and make significant purchases may be a struggle. Or it may be easy. But if the past is any indication of the future, it will be innovation driven.

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In this episode, Jim discusses the self-driving car, a staple of sci-fi books and movies and predicted by automakers as far back as the 1930's, as was shown in a 1935 Chevy promotional film. With Cruise Automation’s application with the California DMV for a permit to operate autonomous vehicles in the city of San Francisco with no safety driver board, the future is about to enter the present.

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