All Features
Eric Whitley
Manufacturing has come a long way from manual labor and assembly lines. The industry has evolved through various phases, from the Industrial Revolution to mass production, and now to Industry 4.0. Each phase has brought its own set of challenges and opportunities, shaping the way goods are produced…
Etienne Nichols
Supply chain management is crucial to any medtech company’s ability to deliver safe, effective, and high-quality devices to their customers.
But as anyone in the industry can tell you, consistently getting the products and services you need to manufacture your devices is harder than it sounds. In…
InnovMetric Software
Today, manufacturing companies have sophisticated 3D measurement labs with portable and CNC coordinate measuring machines (CMMs), laser scanners, laser trackers, and digital gauges, and every brand of hardware uses its own software solution. When relying on multiple software programs, multiple…
Peter Nathanial, David Zuluaga Martínez, Theodoros Evgeniou, Francois Candelon
Last month, the heads of seven major American AI companies emerged from the White House with an agreement on “self-regulation.” On the other side of the Atlantic, Europeans debate the long-awaited EU AI Act, the next major digital regulation following the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). The DSA is…
MIT News
The Singapore MIT-Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, has launched a new interdisciplinary research group aimed at tackling key social and institutional challenges around the rise of artificial intelligence and other new technologies. The group,…
Gleb Tsipursky
Many employees are asking, “Do we really need to go to the office?” as the leadership at major companies like Amazon, Apple, Disney, Starbucks, and JP Morgan mandate three or more days a week of office-based work. Employees are adamant that they are doing their jobs effectively at home, and data…
Del Williams
To move delicate products or powders, most processors do extensive homework before purchasing a tubular drag-cable conveyor to ensure that it meets their needs for function and price. After the purchase, the conveyor must be expertly assembled and tested to ensure smooth production startup and…
William A. Levinson
Inflation is a serious national issue. Credit agency Fitch Ratings just downgraded the U.S. credit rating—as in the “full faith and credit of the United States”—from AAA to AA+.1 This doubtlessly reflects the fact that our national debt exceeds $31 trillion, or almost $100,000 for every American,…
Vivian Lam
The microscope is an iconic symbol of the life sciences, and for good reason. From the discovery of the existence of cells to the structure of DNA, microscopy has been a quintessential tool of the field, unlocking new dimensions of the living world not only for scientists but also for the general…
Chandrakant Isi
Apple’s Vision Pro announcement has sparked a renewed interest in the world of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). Looking through the lens of industrial environments, these technologies have already made significant contributions in manufacturing, maintenance, and training processes.…
Enver Yucesan
It’s frustrating for customers to be told that a coveted mobile phone is out of stock, or worse, be bumped off an overbooked flight. Disgruntled consumers could turn to rival products or hurt the business’s reputation with negative reviews. But holding excess stock to avoid disappointing customers…
Gleb Tsipursky
Have you wondered how to foster remote and hybrid diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace? Many companies have consulted with me about developing and implementing their strategies for returning to the office and establishing permanent work arrangements. During my interviews with…
Stephanie Ojeda
Untitled Document
Workplace safety incidents are a key driver of risk in manufacturing organizations. There are the obvious risks to workers, whose ability to make a living directly depends on their employer’s approach to safety.
There are also huge risks to companies themselves, which face…
Vanessa Bates Ramirez
If you’ve seen the Terminator movies, you may remember the shape-shifting humanoid robot T-1000. Made of liquid metal, it could instantly self-heal bullet wounds and other injuries, its metal simply oozing back together and making any damage disappear. Decades after the concept of self-healing…
Mark Graban
I can’t count how many times during the past 20 years I’ve heard executives complain that their people aren’t enthusiastically participating in their lean program. Leaders lament that while the company has spent a small fortune to put everybody through continuous improvement training, hardly…
Michael Platt, Elizabeth Z. Johnson
Most leaders would attest that true collaboration—the pooling of knowledge, perspectives, and brainpower of talented people—is a desired yet often elusive outcome. To change that, and boost the likelihood of generating breakthrough results, draw on parallels with improvisational jazz during your…
Mike Figliuolo
Do you find yourself muttering, “I hate my job” every day when you wake up? Have you been saying that for more than a month straight? Are people starting to avoid you because you’re a downer to be around?
Then it’s probably time to shut your mouth and quit your job.
Yep. Time for another…
Kobi Leins, ISO
Untitled Document
In everyday life, the most common conversation about artificial intelligence (AI) goes along the lines of, “I used ChatGPT, and it did x.” Corporate leaders, governments, and international organizations, however, are having a very different conversation. Theirs is about how the…
Chris Bush
Untitled Document
The U.N. recognizes privacy as a fundamental human right, and nowhere is this more important than in medical data. That’s why both the U.S. and the EU have regulations in place that govern the collection, storage, and use of patient data in healthcare.
In the U.S., there is the…
Harald Remmert
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, once said that what he could measure he could control. Other variations of this saying are, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it,” or, “To measure is to know.” In a highly intricate and delicate industry like utilities, it’s challenging to have reliable…
Rob McAveney
For most discrete manufacturing companies, digital transformation initiatives are underway in some capacity. They’re largely seen as table stakes in today’s economy. Unfortunately, outdated systems and procedures often bring problems that hinder these initiatives.
A lack of consistency among…
Andrey Koptelov
In this age of rapid technological innovation, the introduction of sophisticated technologies in various industries has raised complex ethical dilemmas. As businesses strive to achieve financial goals and keep stakeholders happy, they also have to mitigate the adverse effects of technology…
Jones Loflin
During my 29 years of working with leaders and managers, I’ve rarely heard any of them say, “I’m so excited about doing the performance reviews for my team.” They see it as another “elephant” in their schedule.
But performance reviews are important. Some of the benefits include:
I also believe…
Jennifer Chu
Getting blood test results can take anywhere from a day to a week, depending on what a test is targeting. The same goes for tests of water pollution and food contamination. And in most cases, the wait time has to do with time-consuming steps in sample processing and analysis.
Now, MIT engineers…
Donald J. Wheeler
As we learned last month, the precision to tolerance ratio is a trigonometric function multiplied by a scalar constant. This means that it should never be interpreted as a proportion or percentage. Yet the simple P/T ratio is being used, and misunderstood, all over the world. So how can we properly…