Dean is a passionate and enthusiastic industry expert with over 30 years of experience and demonstrated success under his belt. He is driven by his desire to help people and believes in doing business with people, not companies. For the last year at IMEC, Dean has demonstrated his passion by working with and helping a wide range of organizations to create competitive futures in Northern Illinois.

Smart Manufacturing. Factory of the Future. Industry 4.0. These are the buzzwords used by those driving the manufacturing world forward. At the heart of these concepts is digital manufacturing and design (DM&D). But what exactly is DM&D? And what does it mean for the small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs) that make up the majority of the industry?

It has been proven that when safety is treated at the same level of importance as productivity, cost saving and quality, companies save hundreds of thousands of dollars daily by preventing injuries.

How can you incorporate safety in your daily work interactions?

This is an original infographic from NIST Manufacturing Innovation Blog.

Manufacturing industries as varied as automotive, electronics, chemical products and food already use collaborative robots (cobots) for tasks such as assembly, loading and packaging. The partnership between humans and cobots is an important one that combines tasks and drills with thoughts and skills.

This is an original article written by Jon Berbaum, President of Highland Solutions.

Journey maps are very popular tools at the moment, and with good reason. They’re a simple, fast, and effective way to help a team understand the experiences that customers are having with an organization from the customers’ point of view.

This is a guest blog, written by Alec Alessandra, M.B.A, former John Deer Executive, former IMEC Board Member, and Senior Strategist of Strategic Impact Partners, and Robert Pojasek, Ph.D, Senior Strategist of Strategic Impact Partners.

Many small and medium-sized supplier organizations are receiving notices from their larger sourcing customers to implement a variety of different international standards at their facilities. These standards could include:

• ISO 9001: 2015 (for quality)
• ISO 14001: 2015 (for the environment)
• ISO 31000: 2018 (regarding risk management)
• ISO 45001: 2018 (covering health and safety)
• ISO 50001:2018 (covering energy management)
• The Ethical Trading Initiative Program