The manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy is comprised of 18 industries. Each industry is responsible for manufacturing the goods used in households and businesses daily. One industry that has attracted recent scrutiny is the high-tech manufacturing industry. Despite the news of new developments and rivals amongst manufacturers in this industry, many people...
Making a plant more sustainable can quickly become a costly endeavor. Fortunately, it doesn't have to be. Sustainable manufacturing, by definition, involves using enough energy to produce what is currently needed without putting future energy stores and environmental needs in jeopardy. This can be done without overhauling the entire plant. There are little...
Companies practicing lean manufacturing can benefit highly from vendor-managed inventories, or VMI. Unlike traditional inventory management, a VMI arrangement is between two companies. The arrangement is used to lower the cost of inventory for the customer companies. It is also a way for the manufacturers of the inventory to help...
Repurposing is another way to introduce green practices into a factory. It is like recycling, but object being reused doesn't become another thing. Repurposed machines, for example, are used to produce more than one product—products outside of its normal usage criteria. The concept of repurposing is already taking hold in the manufacturing industry...
For many years there’s been a fear of outsourcing in manufacturing. This fear comes from a time when companies were relocating outside of the U.S. to take advantage of cheaper labor and infrastructure. Once the Great Recession started on the slow path to recovery, a curious thing began to occur....
When the recession hit, many people blamed the collapse of the auto industry, the financial sector, and the mortgage meltdown for the loss of manufacturing jobs. These things contributed, but the damage was already done before the collapse. Aside from economists in the know, few people understand that the losses...
The motors that power manufacturing machines are just like the ones that power our cars, in that preventive maintenance is key to avoiding catastrophic and costly problems. The motor is obviously a large part of any machine’s operating system. When it goes down, so does production until the problem is...
Let’s face it, green products are a goldmine in today’s world of environmental consciousness. Many consumers buy “organic”, “recyclable”, and “green” products by what they see on the label. This makes it all too tempting for a company to slap such a label on the product whether it deserves it...
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...
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