Best in Manufacturing – December 4, 2016
Each Sunday, we publish a list of top articles and other content related to manufacturing in areas like quality control, product development, supply chain management, sourcing, auditing and law.
1. The intersection of human factors and advanced manufacturing
When people think about the future of manufacturing, they often focus on great new technologies, like augmented reality, super advanced materials and machine learning, among other things. Yet there’s another part of the future that deserves 
attention: us.
As manufacturing evolves, we need to change and adapt with it. After all, what good is a sophisticated piece of machinery if no one can use it?
Increasingly complex production equipment requires skilled workers that continue to develop with the technology they’re using. Without this arrangement in place, it’s unlikely that manufacturers will succeed in receiving the benefits they expect from advanced, futuristic machines.
The author mentions a quote from a member of the British Parliament that’s particularly relevant to this point:
While technology has the ability to increase productivity and reduce costs, it’s human factors that will enable us to fully integrate our supply chains and enable differentiation.
Companies need to pay sufficient attention to the human factors involved in manufacturing to achieve this sort of differentiation. Putting financial considerations aside, most companies can find and purchase the same advanced manufacturing equipment. But not all of them have the same talent. Successfully managing both of these aspects will determine the winners and losers in the next generation of manufacturing.
To learn more about the interaction of humans and advanced manufacturing, check out the full article in the link below:
The Role of Human Factors in the Future of Manufacturing – Editorial staff, the Manufacturer
2. The Chinese response to a Trump trade war
I think most people can agree that in this past election cycle in the U.S., tensions flared over a variety of issues. One issue that caught the interest of China, though, was President Trump’s remarks about how he would handle trade with the country.
He proposed, among many other ideas, imposing a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports into the U.S. As the article points out, this idea and all the rest will eventually have to stand up to the U.S. political system… as well as China’s own counteractions. The Chinese response might include:
- Imposing antidumping (AD) and countervailing duties (CVD);
- Enforcing domestic antitrust legislation; and
- Enforcing criminal laws against U.S. company officials
These retaliatory measures are no joke. The first action is arguably the most damaging that China could take in response to Trump’s policy agenda. The author mentions that, while in the past AD and CVD Chinese actions were directed at big companies like Corning, Tyson Foods and Cadillac (to name a few), their impact was limited.
But there’s precedent for when there was, in fact, a significant impact on American, European and Korean exports:
After the US and EU filed AD/CVD actions against Chinese solar cells and modules in 2011, China initiated its own AD/CVD actions against solar-grade polysilicon from the United States, EU and Korea. China’s AD/CVD action effectively closed off the largest export market for US polysilicon producers… REC Silicon just this month blamed China trade actions for its less than stellar third quarter revenues.
Trade policy goes both ways. If the U.S. wants to start a trade war, then you can bet that China will respond in kind. For those of us that can’t directly dictate what policies our countries will take, the best idea might be to just start contingency planning.
If you’d like to learn about the other two possible Chinese reactions to a Trump trade war, check out the full article in the link below:
What Will China Do If President Trump Starts a Trade War? – Adams Lee, China Law Blog
3. Cameras snapping away in quality control
If you attend a high speed race, like Formula 1 or NASCAR, there’s always a camera with remarkable resolution to take a picture of who’s the winner. The reason is simple: the human eye can’t keep up with fast moving objects as well as a 
camera. Determining who the real winner is becomes a no-brainer.
This approach to verification is used nowadays in quality control. Especially when machines can produce goods at a rapid pace, human operators are incapable of catching defects. Introducing high-resolution cameras to production lines, however, allows companies to catch problems reliably and efficiently.
One project engineer had this to say about how looking at the production line frame-by-frame is helpful:
After making only a few high-speed recordings, we were able to select the filling jets in such a way that the filling process ran without any more troublesome splashes. Next, the camera provided us with information we could use to constantly reduce bottlenecks in the production flow.
Cameras aren’t just good for selfies, family photos and the like. They possess real benefits for manufacturers everywhere that want to pin down exactly where in their production processes quality suffers. And when compared to costly plant investments, buying a few appropriate cameras for quality control and process improvement definitely seems worth considering.
If you’d like to learn more about cameras in factories and how they contribute to quality control, check out the full article in the link below:
How High-speed Cameras Improve Quality Control – Max Scholz, Quality Magazine
4. A new certification for quality professionals
The American Society for Quality (ASQ) recently released a new certification for those in the QC industry: Certified Supplier Quality Professional. The certification is a great way for QC professionals to increase their chances of making orders consistently satisfactory.
Your success partly depends on how well your supplier is doing. If your supplier is having management issues, for example, then that’ll most likely influence the quality of what you receive on a regular basis. Effective communication with your supplier to determine the root of the problem is necessary to return operations to normal and ensure smooth sailing.
By taking a holistic view of supplier management and emphasizing the importance of communication, this certification offers official accreditation for those that play an important role in their supply chain. It focuses on areas like:
- Supplier strategy;
- Risk management;
- Supplier selection and part qualification;
- Supplier performance monitoring and improvement;
- Supplier quality management;
- Relationship management; and
- Business governance, ethics and compliance
Improving quality is about more than just throwing money at issues. Sometimes, it requires a more versatile approach. And the sage advice provided by this certification is well-rounded enough to push QC professionals to go beyond money and achieve better quality.
If you’d like to read more about the new Certified Supplier Quality Professional certification from the ASQ, check out the full article in the link below:
New ASQ Certification Adds Focus for Quality Professionals and Others – Robert Napoletano, Quality Digest
5. Beneficial holes in your wearable electronics
Whenever you find holes in your clothes, it’s usually the result of wear and tear. It’s a sign that you’ve got to either go buy some new ones or visit a tailor to have the openings fixed. But in the future, for wearable electronics, an abundance of 
holes might actually be an advantage.
Darwin Reyes-Hernandez, a researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States, recently stumbled upon a way to “build safe, nontoxic gold wires onto flexible, thin plastic film.” The discovery has a host of applications for wearable electronics. It could even affect devices that go inside our bodies to monitor our health.
You can’t put just anything on or in your body, though. When it comes to good materials for wearable electronics, gold stands above the rest. It’s a nontoxic material that doesn’t corrode. In the past, it’s been used to make wires that go across plastic surfaces. Unfortunately, as the author points out, the plastic used before was rigid, which isn’t ideal for products people need to wear.
But one day while conducting a separate experiment, Reyes-Hernandez found that gold with accompanying pores on their plastic surfaces is still capable of conducting electricity. Specifically, he mentioned:
Apparently the pores keep the gold from cracking as dramatically as usual. The cracks are so tiny that the gold still conducts well after bending.
Importers and manufacturers of medical devices can benefit from what NIST has found by eventually incorporating small holes into wearable electronics so they can maintain flexibility and conductivity. And while this discovery is still in its infancy, it could maybe serve useful to other industries in the future that desire these attributes in their products.
To read about how this discovery was made and how it could affect wearable electronics, check out the full article in the link below:
For Wearable Electronic Devices, NIST Shows Plastic Holes Are Golden – Editorial staff, the National Institute of Standards and Technology
We’re constantly scanning the web for top manufacturing stories and news. But if you’d like to submit an article for consideration for our weekly Best in Manufacturing, send us a message and let us know.
