Preparing to automate a plant is an exciting prospect. Automation can easily make the processes and production run more efficiently than before. The prospect of new technology is also exciting in itself. Despite the thrill, plant managers shouldn't leap too quickly into automating their work space. Doing so can have consequences that can...
In January 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration began warning of an impending shortage in the availability of certain drugs. These included cancer-fighting drugs, asthma medications and drugs often administered in the emergency room. To help patients and doctors track the availability of the drugs, the FDA set up...
The Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT) and the American Machine Tool Distributors’ Association (AMTDA) released a report on the status of the manufacturing technology industry in 2010. Manufacturing technology describes tools used to produce the goods manufactured each year. The state of this industry reflects a few things about the...
Every Michigan manufacturing plant has its ritual that prepares the facility for the severe cold, snow, and ice of winter. The ritual starts in October, well before the first snow. However, preventive maintenance departments shouldn’t let the harsh weather slip from all thought after that ritual is complete. There are...
Elsewhere in manufacturing, quality control consists of tasting, sampling, trying, and testing the products coming off the assembly line. In pharmaceuticals manufacturing, quality control is a bit more intricate. Prescription drugs consist of precise chemical compounds formulated to perform a certain task within the body. Quality control thus consists of...
The pharmaceutical industry has long been thought of as the most recession-proof in the manufacturing world today. It is a medical-based industry that creates items that people need to survive, no matter how old they are—prescription drugs. However, the recession of 2008-2009 had many experts rethinking the categorization of...
Customer care representatives in the manufacturing industry are not given the credit they deserve for the job they perform. Plant managers call with questions on the machine, payments, account issues and orders. It is up to the customer care representative to field all of these questions. But, how can a...
Finding a preventive maintenance training program may turn out to be a bit difficult if you've never used one. They are offered by equipment manufacturers, software companies and people who specialize in equipment training. Many programs cater to entire factories, like those using software that can run on company computers....
Preventive maintenance is a part of the industrial process, but it is also something that one must learn. Fortunately, companies can easily train their staff without having to hire a specialty team. The problem, though, is that managers in manufacturing industry often argue the importance of this specialized training. In...
Spare parts inventories only function properly when they are properly managed. Proper management entails planning scheduling, monitoring, and procurement. When any of these components are out of line, you have a recipe for problems, the kind that involve a broken piece of machinery and not enough spare parts to fix...
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